WAR OFFICE AGREES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 17, 21 January 1939, Page 19

WAR OFFICE AGREES

LIPSTICK WITH UNIFORMS

WOMEN'S AUXILIARY SERVICE

If women of the Auxiliary Territorial, Service want to. wear lipstick with their uniform, the War Office will not object, states the London, "Evening Standard."

"Whether women territorials may use lipstick with their uniform, and if so to what extent, is left. to the discretion of the local commandants," said a War Office spokesman;

This will relieve the tension upon the local commandants who, since Mrs. H. J. Neill, Company Commandant in Sheffield, uttered her diatribe against stick on parade have been awaiting a lead from headquarters.

The local commandants are now scrutinising those sartorial instructions concerning themselves which, are already, laid down by the War Office. These touch on several delicate matters with characteristic War Office austerity.

Stockings,. for instance —the rule about them sounds very severe. They are "*.o be of drab material to match the skirt and jacket," and "they should hoi be transparent."

Drab and opaque stockings are a strain on any woman's patriotism, and there are uneasy suspicions that, as Ume has gone on, the stockings of some members have tended to show pink glints. •

There are War Office rules about shoes, too. They must be "of brown leather, with low heels, plain toecaps, and should be laced." Gloves must be of brown leather.

The War Office is particularly determined that there shall be nothing coquettish about shirts, collars, and ties.

The shirt, they say, should match the jacket and be of celluloid material with a stand-and-fall collar, but with close-fitting fall in front. As to ties, they "will be, khaki and made in washable material."