DEESS DICTATOR

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 112, 7 November 1935, Page 19

DEESS DICTATOR

FOR HOCKEY GIRLS

An all-powerful dress censor has been appointed by the All-England Women's Hockey Association to dictate the costumes" women shall and shall not wear when playing. She is Mrs. C. S. Smallman, the Warwickshire county player, and she will have the full support of the association in any decisions she rriay make regarding dress, says the "Daily Mail." In this way the association is hoping to deal with a problem which has arisen as the result of their decision to permit the wearing of the divided skirt. Knees may be bare and skirts divided, but the point which is causing so much debate is when does a divided skirt cease to be a skirt and become shorts? Every club or county intending to adopt the divided skirt will have to submit a specimen to Mrs. Smallman for approval. LOOK ITS PART. "The divided skirt," she said, "must look like a divided skirt, and not like shorts. It must not be too short or too wide. "You, will not find anything on ths hockey field'which has not been approved." The dress question has long been a contentious topic in hockey circles. "Shorts" have been banned in Germany for six years. In 1919 a Middlesbrough omnibus conductor objected to the dress of women hockey players travelling in his vehicle. Only last January members of the Ulster Public Officers' Association's team were suspended by the Northera Ireland Ladies' Hockey Union because the players failed to wear red stockings—a distinctive dress encouraged by the union in order to assist umpires. In 1900 when players wore straw hats, collars and ties, and long, trailing skirts, the game was not universally considered "nice."