NOT SO GAY

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 June 1935, Page 9

NOT SO GAY

CHANGES IN PARISIAN WAYS. Paris has changed. It is not necessary to be endowed with a long memory to remark the changes. Paris looks very different to-day from the wav she did some two years ago. It is not only the to-let signs that spell depression, but it is the changes that are 'taking place in the habits of the city.

Not so long ago Paris was frankly ;le luxe. Just, to walk through certain streets gave most people a mad desire to have tons of: money. So many beautiful things were alluringly displayed in shop windows that even the most unacquisitive. soul felt a tug on his purse strings. And as for women — just to read the names over the doors of the great dressmaking houses unsettled their peace of mind. Before “the crisis,” as the French call it, all one £»aw on certain streets of Paris was select, beautiful, desirable. Take, for example, the Rue de la’Paix. How cunningly it presented dresses and jewels, antiques and works of art. To spend half an hour looking into the shop windows of the Rue de la Paix was to soak yourself in an atmosphere of luxury. To-day. while some of its splendour remains, that splendour is sandwiched in between to-let signs, and little shops that sell dresses and lingerie for next to nothing. To buy a dress on the Rue de la Paix now you do not have to drive up in a splenedid car, with a fat bank account at your back, you have only to arrive on foot with a couple of hundred francs in your pocket, and buy what you like. The same is true of jewels, for flanking the great jewellery houses are shops where imitation jewellery may be bought for a fraction of the price of the real.

ALTERED EATING HABITS. • One odd thing is noticeable all over the capital. It is the disappearance of antique shops, which nine times out of ten are being replaced by some sort of food shop, such as groceries and fruit stores. How explain that, when money was plentiful and people could eat well, antique shops throve, and that, now that money is scarce and people cannot eat as they did, food dealers usurp the places of antique dealers? As everyone knows, Paris has always been noted for its food. The habit of eating food that could only be described lyrically is dying out. The old restaurants that presented food fit for the gods are disappearing one by one. People cannot spend money as they did; even those who still can afford to pay a restaurant bill without looking at anything but the final figure have simplified their eating habits because it has become the fashion to eat simply and in bars.

The last few months have introduced .something that is entirely new to tho streets of Paris —newsgirls. They are young women who set out briskly v.-it-Ji a bundle of the latest editions under their arms and call their wares in a pleasant voice, quite different from that- of the newsboy. The girls

are neatly dressed and usually wear a little beret, set at a jaunty angle. They look very cheerful and businesslike and seem to enjoy their metier. Th’sy probably did clerical work before the crisis, but have taken to selling newspapers rather than be without a means of livelihood. Another curious effect of the crisis is the wav© of oqcultisni that has swept over Paris. People are trying to look into the future or to find some way to ameliorate ■ their condition. There are columns of advertisements in many newspapers setting forth the miraculous powers of fortune tellers and of talismans. There are sincere students of various forms of occultism, ranging from artology to spiritualism,. from white magic to numerology, who seek to better their lot and the lot of th©ir friends. Some people think that even the charlatans do no harm. They take but little money for their predictions, and they predict very cheerful things, so that their victims usually get their money’s worth in encouragement.