MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 April 1933, Page 3

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OF INTEREST

“PLUS FOURS” FOR WOMEN. LONDON’S FASHION SURPRISES. Fashions for 1933 so diverse as to include feminine plus fours and the Spanish dancer’s skirt will be paraded this week in the salons of two brilliant young London designers (wrote a fashion expert, on February 15, in the “Daily Telegraph.”) Although Paris has issued her edicts for the past fortnight, it is the London “openings” that fashionable women , have been awaiting so eagerly. They have ceased to go to Paris out of motives of patriotism, and London designers have accordingly forged ahead. To-day a Bruton-street designer is showing evening gowns with the Spanish dancer skirt, tight to below the knees, and then very full. To-morrow another designer in the same street is introducing women’s plus fours that can be converted into cruising kit. “Women are definitely taking to trousers,” Mr. Peter Russell told me. “The fashion was launched six months ago, but needed a lead such as Marlene Dietrich has given it. Women’s figures have changed; five years ago the mode could never have been introduced.” The plus fours are cut the same as men’s and made by a man’s tailor They will be paraded with ghillie shoes and the new beret, worn over one eye. A sun-bathing flannel dross and sack coat adapt the outfit for cruising. Horizontal stripes will create one of the most startling evening fashions. They will encircle the figure from bodice to ankles. Stripes will still be worn from morning to night, and chevrons will adorn collars, epaulettes, and' belts. Lacquered fabrics provide another dress sensation. A lacquered chiffon evening gown is one of the Victor Stiebel creations that mannequins will parade to-day. Ice blue, a dirty pink, and two shades of grey, smoke and pearl, will be the principal colours featured at this display.

VICTORIAN REVIVALS. Apart from the classic cap and coiffure, we have of late been much under the “Empire” and “Victorian” influence. Dress-artists very definitely stress the vogues of the later eighteenth century and early and late “nineties.” Capes and berthes from the ’nineties have been a long time attaining popularity in the modern wardrobe, but they were presented this season in such delightful ways that various forms of both appear in every dress show. A further revival is the dolman wrap and polonaise effect of the ’eighties. There may be but little apparent resemblance between Great Aunt Maria’s photograph, in her tightlystrained, austere black moire polonaise, and the swathed, soft folds of similar fabrics in their modern form, but the basis of the style is the same. There is a quaint revival reproduced in buttons down the front and back, a tiny ruched trimming, or kilting, to assist in outlining the cut of the princess garment of 1932, which may, or may not, finish tightly at the knees, to reveal an under-skirt of contrast, with an ample dolman in fabric to correspond. Fashions again recall the old family album, both in colour, fabric and funny little attractive! touches that prove charming when allied to the bolder modern cut and line. Curls—nice, ripply, tempting ones at the back of the head —are to be the fashion this season. So say the hairdressers. In the last week or two they have been wondering just what change fashion would decree, and varying forecasts have been made. Now, they say with one voice that curls are to be the keystone of all hair-styles. Nobody can say with certainty whether these curls are merely to peep below the hat or whether they are to hang more or less profuse at the back of the neck. “It all depends on the popular verdict when the first modes are seen,” said one leading hairdresser. “My own opinion is that, they will be fairly long curls. “In any case, hair will have to be worn a little longer than at present. This will come as a shock to those who have been preparing for a wholehearted return to the short shingle, as once seemed likely.”

LOVABLE OR POWERFUL. MODERN WOMAN’S POSITION. It is not a hundred years now since woman had her province completely and exclusively at home. The boss in every right-thinking household was the man, and one’s husband deciding this, or one’s father that, was sullicient authority to guide the whole behaviour of the family. Nowadays there are so few households of that kind that you will probably have quite a job, in your whole acquaintance, to call a single one to mind. Men resent increasingly the increas(ing power of women. In business, in sport, in public life the scale has been so far equalised that sometimes it dips heavily on the feminine side. Women have demanded (and often achieved) a great deal in a very short while, and the thing men resent is that in many ways, and particularly at home, it has made them considerably less likable. Women have climbed so far in a breathless hurry that they must be careful if they are going to avoid ruining it all by being unbecomingly tyrannical and triumphant. It is a disappointing fact that most women who rise to positions of authority tend to become less likable in their private lives. (Many of them, of course, consider it far more praiseworthy to be in charge of a large staff of women, or in command of a women’s college, or a feted world champion of this or that, than to be an obscurely lovable nobody, but then, who cares what they think?) And the “emancipation” that has given women so much more freedom than ever those first suffragists ever dreamed of is in danger of doing them so much personal harm that every woman ought to examine her conscience and make out which way her freedom is leading her.

NEW DIET. Fashions in diet and exercise to achieve slenderness are quite as changeable in fact as fashions in frocks and hats. The starvation diet modes of several years past are as dangerous as they are out of fashion. The healthy and sure way to be slender is “eat three meals every day,” as massages and exercises are the important factor —more important than the diet. When the scales are going up, start your programme. The following meals are excellent. Orange or grapefruit juice, toast and honey, with black coffee for breakfast. Lunch, clear soup, the juice of tomato, and a head of lettuce with a little mineral oil dressing. Dinner, the last meal of the day, is soup, a lean meat, one green vegetable, a small salad, and black coffee. Do not touch bread in any form, sugar, potatoes, or butter. The new method of exercise is : Fifteen minutes every morning lie on your back '-doing bicycle movement with the limbs, then touch the floor from standing position 50 times, then lie flat on the hack again and roll from side to side for another 50 times. The above treatment should produce a weekly weight loss ranging from two to five pounds. SHY HEIRESSES. Formerly the title of the “richest girl in Chicago” was one which was proudly borne by those who could claim it —and by some who could not. But now, since the departure of Miss Rosemary Baur, the £400,000 heiress who married and went to England, all the rich Chicago girls disown the distinction. And the reason? They 7 fear that to be known as the “richest girl” would result in their being kidnapped and held to ransom now that kidnapping is growing into one of America’s leading industries.