DECADENCE OF WOMEN'S FASHIONS

Evening Star, Issue 22817, 27 November 1937, Page 27

DECADENCE OF WOMEN'S FASHIONS

MASS PRODUCTION EFFECTS INDIFFERENCE TO QUALITY During the past 30 years wo have witnessed a revolution in women’s dress in accordance with new social and psychological conditions. Fashion implies a certain fluidity in the structure of society. In a rigid hierarchy such as that of the Old Regime, styles were esoteric, the privilige of the aristocracy, To-day they have expanded to influence all classes. The automobile has rapidly created new ideas in apparel, and has shifted the gaudy court of fashion from Trouville to Paris-Plage, to Deauville, to Cannes, in dizzy succession. After the war, too, a general craze for sport among all classes tended to simplify women’s styles, making for brevity rather than elegance and luxury.

Tbe coming of big industry, mechanically made fabrics, artificial silk, lace, and leather, brought a great flood of clothing on the market in mass-produc-tion styles, with ready-made garments sold like any standardised product in large department stores, and thrown before the rural public in bulky catalogues. Women in all walks of life strove to dress beyond their incomes, working girls dressed like the well-to-do, and the latter tried to maintain their distinction. Country girls dressed like Parisians. Because of the rapid change in fashions large clothing manufacturers used as a strong sales inducement the warning that certain styles would be procurable only after a certain date. . Indeed, inferior durability of the new clothing made quick changes necessary. The new consciousness of speed and transition, the spirit of revolution and iconoclasm, inspired little respect for th© old. It is probable that if women had time to-day to remain at home and to spend a great deal of time with their dress, as formerly, the styles would be as stable and complicated as they were in tho nineteenth century. To-day the woman is tempted further by tbe alluring offer of two dresses for the price of one. She allows herself to be taken in by tho appearance of a shop window dressed by experts and graced by lighting under which any material would look pleasing. There are salons in Paris well known for their high standard of artistry, where certain models by Patou, Chanel, or Rochas are shown—with interesting differences for tho professional observer: An_ imperceptible change in cut, in material. used, and in finish. Th© real models have been bought in order to avoid trouble with the. creators, and from these are made many garments exactly alike which are sold to the clients as individually styled dresses. Or perhaps at the end of a season, in order to use up all remaining materials and keep the help busy, the dress establishment will decide not to wait for its clientele, but proceeds to produce a series of garments in styles that have been successful. Here again th© buyer gets only an illusion of “ her dress ” created for her as a work of art and bearing a trade-mark of prestige. Other clothing manufacturers in recent years have boldly established shops among the classic dress salons in the Champs-Elysees and other likely quarters in Paris. With th© aid of highpressure advertising and schemes for the entertainment of the shopper they have bad some success. Some unscrupulous raeketeei-s will rent several places along a great shopping street and place the same models on display in several shops at prices ranging widely. If the buyer sees a suitable dress in one shop marked at a much lower price than was asked for the same article in another shop she is almost sure to buy, and without thinking much about quality or distinction.

At the same time, tho majority of th© small shops are filled with massedproduced gowns and coats which deny all individuality, since they are made to please one buyer as much as another and to serve a variety of purposes—work, sport, or semi-formal wear. From the world’s fashion laboratories, that is, the great gown salons of Paris, oomo tho ideas, th© general lines of the new mode. The manufacturers seize upon the essentia] traits and issue them to the general public stripped of everything that can make them distinctive or lessen their sales possibility among the lower middle class and rural populace. For few women, even the most eccentric, would adopt in their entirety the cx-eations of a Rochas or a Mainbocher. The manufacturer who makes a garment at a fixed price is governed in his details of copy by tbe price itself. He will make such a dress with such a detail because it will mean a minimum of time and work. Or, he will replace a hand-made detail by a machine-made one; and his cloth will be as inferior as is necessary to clear his profit. If it is true that Paris is still th© unchallenged creative centre for gowns, it is also true that the massproduced dresses of Czechoslovakia and Germany are rivalling French sales on the markets. Berlin and New York have been to some degree successful in setting styles, and the intense nationalism in recent years has dealt a severe blow to Franc© as the mistress of fashion. A few years ago, th© fashionable women of the world went to the salons of Paris to be dressed. To-day, especially since tbe depression, they may come to Paris for an idea or a model, but they buy in their own countx'ies. In the public mind there has grown up an indifference to quality; the governing factor of the purchase is cheapness of price. The kind of collective psychosis among women which causes them to buy at the lowest figure can result only in severe injux-y to styles. The dress is no longer the attire of our grandmothers, a gay companion, or an intimate one; it is now for most women no more than a temporary envelope of no pei’sonal value. The modern decadence in fashion results from the public’s preference for things of short duration. The people themselves live in such confusion that an article of quality affects them in the same way as a guest who has outstayed his welcome ; what they want to buy is not things of true suitability to their own lives, but rather something to flatter them with a dream they have made for themselves, to help them to appear what they are not. Vain hearts must have their illusions.