CHANGE IN SYDNEY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 96, 24 April 1942, Page 8

CHANGE IN SYDNEY

DIFFERENCE IN SIX WEEKS

BOARDED WINDOWS, GIRLS IN

UNIFORM

Mrs. Charles Callis, a former newspaperwoman who, as Elsie de Tourret worked in Australia for many years with Associated Newspapers and on the_staff of Woman," has just returned to Wellington after six weeks in Sydney. Mrs. Callis, in an interview with a Post' reporter yesterday, described the great change that had taken place in. sy°ney even in the comparatively short time that she was there. When she arrived she had found the shop windows filled with gay clothes and ingenious displays; wen she left the gaiety was gone, the plate glass had been removed from the windows, and the spaces boarded up except for peepS2,™ eei^ s? uare- Even these were "etted and at night were covered with shutters.

Sydney wore a different air, Mrs. Cams said. Many girls were in uniform. They bore themselves seriously, and gave the impression of having a job to do and that they were doing Ir* ,A,* number of women journalists had left their newspaper offices to do essential war work, she said, and among those who had given up journalism was Miss Violet Roche, a newspaperwoman with' many friends in New Zealand. Miss Roche is working in an aircraft factory. Asked whether she had returned to New Zealand with a large supply of silk stockings, Mrs. Callis answered that she had left Sydney with only a few pairs. The hosiery shelves in many shops were completely cleared and only the sheerest and most expensive brands seemed to be displayed. Fashions, she said, were inspired by the Allied nations, and such shades as porcelain pastels and Ming blue (representing China), flag colours (the United States), springbark brown (Australia), blue orchid (the Netherlands East Indies), tulip tones (Holland), Banyan blue (India), and brown (Egypt) were very popular. One big store had devoted its entire window frontage to a display of these colours and they were carried out in women's clothes and against appropriate patriot- backgrounds. Russia had been represented by the reproduction of a laughing Cossack girl, and the display of materials in "bitter" black. "Libre" black had- been chosen for France and had been carried out in Chantilly lace.