THE NEW EAST END

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 December 1933, Page 11

THE NEW EAST END

BEAUTY PARLOUR STYLE. Where is the East End donah. Where Js the pearly queen? Gone, we suspect, with a lot of other things that look romantic in retrospect, and no less a person than the Archbishop or Canterbury has suddenly missed them (writes Margaret Lane in the “Daily Mail”). . , „ “Where are those bands of girls, he asked an audience of “modern youth” in Central Hall, Westminster, this week, “with the sham plush and ostrich feathers, linked arm-in-arm, causing one the greatest embarrassment when they made comments upon one’s episcopal attire?” The Archbishop, who was Bishop of Stepney from 1901 to 1909, now proceeds through the East End astonished and unmolested. ‘Arriets and Elizas no longer lurch across the pavement at him from the publichouse door, inviting each other to “look at ’im in ’is gaiters!” The Archbishop now walks the length of the Mile End Road without seeing so much as the toss of an ostrich feather or a glimpse of a blowsy face. “I see instead,” he says, “elegant young ladies whom one might be glad to think of as one's cousin or one’s niece. Their dress is admirable in its restraint and its fitness. .

The fact of the matter is that the East End' has undergone a change of character within our generation, and the young women of the East End (whom ten years ago it was the fashion for bishops to denounce under the heading of “Modern Girl”) have had the biggest hand in the transformation. 0

There is little, fun for tourists nowadays, excitedly peering through the Port of London in search of Limehouse Nights, or sneaking through alleys in Hoxtoy in the hope of a squalid thrill. The East End has become a bright, tidy, self-respecting place, with good shops, attractive markets, and blocks of excellent workmen’s flats where] slums used' to fester. Everywhere in those shops and streets that make a metropolis of their own you sec those self-sufficient, independent, well-dressed young women who have taken the place of the squalid donah of pre-war days. JEWISH BEAUTIES. The East End girl does not drink. Unlike her feathered predecessor, who so embarrassed the Archbishop and was always coming through swing doors with a jug in her hand, she never dreams of spending her money

on beer. She would rather spend-what little she can afford in a fortnightly visit to the hairdresser and on good two-shilling silk stockings froin Petticoat Lane: J. An excursion down Whitechapel High Street in the evening, when, the workshops are closed and the street lights as brilliant as Piccadilly, will show you the touch of the beauty parlour in the East End. Thd young Jewish girls in particular are fastidious about their hair. Glossy black curls, optimistically arranged like Constance Bennett’s, firm, rather formal waves that cost half-a-crown, and a lick of brilliantine, careful make-up (not too heavy), and finger nails splendid from painstaking home manicure. They all seem to know what to w’ear. The girl in the cut-rate cigarette stall wears a spotless- white overall by day and comes cut in the evening in navy blue with a silk blouse.

Thousands -of them work by day in the wholesale clothing trade, and know where artificial silk dresses can be bought for ten shillings. Their appearance is undoubtedly their biggest expenditure, but how it pays! In the evening, in the glimmer of shop’ lights and wet streets and the faint autumn fog coming up from the river, the East End women go out to do their pingNext macintoshes, small hats—dark berets most of them, put on as Apt as a penny over the right eye—silk stockings, and neat shoes. The sariie sort of young women you see in the suburbs of London—except that they have a faint Cockney sharpness and wit that makes them peculiarly attractive- Once or twice a week they go to the “pictures,” once or twice conie up to the West End and' pick up ideas. They are alarmingly up to date. You can walk five miles through Stepney and Stratford and the Isle of- Dogs without catching sight of a single young woman whose clothes or looks or face give any hint of -what “East End”' used' to mean.

It does not mean the sanie- thing any more, and the Archbishop-, Wfitgi he visits the East End, moves- (to - his astonishment) through a population.df nieces and coqsins. The ostrich feather lady was picturesque, in the same way that tjie old East End was, and about as sweetsmelling. She is really better• a music-hall figure, and a stock costume for a fancy-dress - ball. The hew donah, as the Archbishop has found but, is a charming creature. Goodluck to her! -