MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 January 1936, Page 9

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OF INTEREST

WOMEN COMPARED.

AMERICA AND AUSTRALIA.

Australian women are ever curious to know how they compare with their sisters in other countries, particularly North America. The following, written by a Canadian woman who has been living in Sydney for a year, is taken from an Australian periodical and is a, record of impressions given with extreme frankness: — My first impression of Australian women was that of extreme smallness. After having observed them for nearly a year, I still think they are smart —but with qualifications, I was particularly impressed as a newcomer to Sydney by the large number of women in business. By that 1 do not mean the ‘‘females iu industry,” classification alone, although 1 was curious enough to delve into the Australian and Canadian year books for comparative figures. I discovered that the percentage of wonk en in industry is 28 per cent, in Canada against 40 per cent, in Australia. Sydney womens have a wide streak of independence; also .they are exceedingly capable. They reach out for executive positions and responsibility. Not content with being merely a clerk or stenographer, Miss Sydney wants to manage the entire business, and, as I have observed, ; she frequently does. Should it be a frock shop, the chances are that she will have designed and supervised the making up of her stock-in-trade. That would be unusual in a big American city; it is a commonplace in Sydney. Now iu the matter of dress, or frocking as you Australians term it. Sydney women unquestionably can t hold up their heads with their American sisters. The never-ending pai'ade of attractively frocked women in Sydney’s streets comes as.a surprise, often a distinct shock, to feminine visitors from overseas. I’ll confess that I was rudely jolted, for we Americans are quite complacent about our fashions, which are admired the world over. “And Australia is so far away, my dear, goodness knows what they wear down there,” as a friend remarked when I left Canada.

When you understand the vastly different ways in which Miss Sydney and Miss America acquire their wardrobes, the smart appearance of Sydney women is yet more astonishing. In America frocks for the most part are manufactured in the mass by big clothing companies, and it follows these companies can employ highlypaid artists and designers, and sell at low prices. Sydney women do not have such a .vast manufactured stock to choose from, and so, if they want quality and style at a reasonable cost, they are forced to make their own frocks and often design them. American girls select frocks, in the manufacture of which they had no voice; Sydney girls design, adapt and make. One method calls for little or no grey matter; the other calls for initiative and originality. SYDNEY’S SMARTNESS. 11l the arts, the professions, in business, the Australian woman, easily holds her own. I have lived in Chicago and New York and Montreal, three famous high-pressure cities, but never have I known such smart and dynamic women as those of Sydney. What a shock, then, to discover that in her home the Sydney woman is a drudge. For is housework with the ‘‘aid" of flat-irons and coppers and carpet sweepers anything but drudgery? And an incredible number of Sydney homes are so equipped. In hunting for a flat recently I was astounded to find flat-irons included among the equipment of a so-called modern flat. Flat-irons! Modern American women know them not. And what is modern in those monstrosities called coppers, from which you must laboriously transfer your hot water to cement tubs, invariably too high or too low. It is 20 years since a mechanical washing machine was welcomed into my Canadian home. Vacuum cleaners, electric refrigerators and a whole army of other modern time-savers are to be found in the smallest American home. Hot water on tap is a working man’s convenience in American cities. Here you get it in the newest flats. It’s even advertised. The Sydney home that boasts all these conveniences is well equipped, indeed. So efficient in every other way, Miss Sydney is woefully out of date in her home. There is no sign there of the thought and care she displays in the making of her frocks, nor the competence she brings to her business. Sydney homes, indeed, I find strangely unhomelike, unlived in. Built-in wardrobes are rare, and bathrooms just seem to have “happened” Wherever there was enough space left over to erect a shower —and to shiver in. When the outdoor temperature drops and westerlies howl, the same condition prevails indoors. Central heating is a wonder and a luxury. Even Sydney meals are “unhomelike.” With a wonderful all the year round supply of fresh vegetables, why does the Sydney housewife serve with deadly regularity what is surely Australia’s national vegetable—the pumpkin? The American housewife, at certain seasons of the year, must specify whether she wants old or new or canned vegetables, but she, nevertheless, serves more interesting meals than her Australian sister. As for a Sfglad—well, I ask you.

There is one characteristic of Australian homes, however, that sets them apart—the flowers. The lowliest home and the richest alike are graced by them, in astonishingly lavish quantities, and always beautifully arranged.

Australian women have an instinctive taste, a flair for flowers and frocks aud business. But in their homes. . . . !

STREAMLINED HOME.

(By Marion Ryan)

An American mother sees no use in keeping .family heirlooms to hand to her daughter on her marriage. Daughter does not want them. No fiddieback chairs, ancient spinning wheels or family portraits for her. No roaming round to dig out. an old bit. of china or glass. He home is so modern there is no room lor such remnants of tho past. She is streamline in figure, rides in streamline ’buses, flies in streamline ’planes, and has a streamline house or flat. There have been many new houses and flats on these lines shown lately. Long, narrow houses that can be taken apart and put up anywhere, others that, are all chromium and glass, flats with furniture that folds up into the walls when not wanted. Clean, sanitary, labour-saving. Yes, indeed; but none of the left overs from the past that helped to make a home. The latest development in streamline homes is on the 11th floor of the Rockefeller Centre Horticultural Building, and you can see eager young couples there every day, going through the exhibition house. FOR THE HOMESICK. Outside on the setback roof (for the building towers some 30 more storeys up in the air) there are some gardens, French, Italian and English. They occupy about three-quarters of an acre. If you get very homesick looking at tho latest thing in American houses, you can go out and sit in tho English garden, graced with a copper birch, where the turf is as green and smooth as at Oxford, where there are grassy paths and a gay herbaceous border, and look over the wall where down below New York rushes and bustles and bangs. You cannot see the gardens from the little house they enclose, because it is air-conditioned and has no windows, only glass brick walls. It is on a small scale as shown, but can be enlarged to any size wanted in the same trim lines. The kitchen has every electrical device known. A servant would be superfluous. The dishes go into the sink and are washed, dried and stacked by electricity. Clothes are washed and ironed the same way. There are cutters, 'mixers, and scrapers, and an electric mop for the floors. When you want to go out and play bridge you place the dinner in the stove and set it at the right temperature. It is a gay little kitchen, too, all pink, white and red, with a black rubber floor and a glass brick wall, h divides it from the alcove din-ing-room off the living-room, which has a table that folds up into nothingness and a colour scheme which blends with the. living-room. Puttycolour is used on two walls., yellow on a third, and glass bricks on a fourth. The covers and draperies are in brown and yellow diagonal blocks. . A feature of the master bed-room is 3 large clothes cupboards, one panelled in tcedar, the other chintzlined, and with every conceivable gadget for keeping hats, shoes, and scarves as well as clothes. GLASS WALLS. • Here, too, there is one glass wall, out of which you can see nothing but which diffuses the light softly and keeps out al( dust; two pinky beige walls land one of walnut flexwood. The modernist furniture is walnut and the draperies carry out the pinky beige and mulberry shades. Probably a modern child will be delighted with the nursery, with its inevitable glass wall and another or 'dark blue, the others being white, with dark blue stars. ~ , . t .... There is nothing which is not utilitarian in the house save books, in disconcertingly modernistic cases. One quite sympathised with the middle-, aged woman who said, “Thank heaven, I am too old to live in one of these homes!”