New Zealand Women's Clothes Are Drab

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 July 1947, Page 10

New Zealand Women's Clothes Are Drab

There is one word that will spring to your mind as you look at the clothes of the slouch-shouldered, anxious-faced women plodding by in the street, and.that is “drab,” states a woman journalist (reports the. Otago Daily Times) commenting on the lack of originality in New Zealand women’s clothes. The women themselves are not wholly to blame for this. In many eases their colour sense is atrophied, in others non-existent, but this state has been, partly brought about because so many of the shop offerings have for decades been in dowdy colours. What attractive, colorful clothes are made are usually for younger women —but there are not enough even of these.

New Zealand, it would seem, is a worker’s country. Not tor our women the fashion shows, the lingering dalliance over the choice of material and colour, before ordering a design that particularly pleases. The average woman of this Dominion has two choices only. One is to choose an attractive style, which usually depends for its effect on expert workmanship, from an illustration in an overseas journal, buy some material, and give it into the hand of “a little dressmaker,” who may, or may not, do it justice. Or she may, in a series of harried rushes extending sometimes over a period of weeks, throw herself into the melee of lunch-hour shoppers and try to buy something ‘ready made.” Whether because of the uncertainties of the New Zealand climate or whether if is just sheer h'abit, the fact is that the majority of women wear coats all the year round. And it is in this sphere that manufacturers are most culpable. There is a strange, unlovely, devitalised beige that they are very fond of. Do they not realise that it suits nobody? Vast numbers of women wear’ this colour, and, as you watch them from the tram, you see fawn hair, fawn

skin, fawn coat, fawn stockings, and —black or brown shoes. Some women, even in New Zealand, are/individualists, and appear in black coats, sometimes chic, sometimes regrettable Navy blue, even though equally “serviceable,” never seems as popular So there you have the typical street scene A symphony in beige and black, with here’ and there, very infrequently, a splash of colour, which, however, is not always attractive. It is possible to buy coloured coats but. so often they are “cheap” colours —flashy scarlet, sickly turquoise, or a hard blue, Why is no attempt made to educate women to appreciate colour or to satisfy those who have a colour sense? Why do we see no gay cornflower blue coats, none in rich crimson or daffodil yellow? Picture a glowing dark woman in soft crushed strawberry shade, or a “golden” girl in chartreuse. Put them both in beige and it is like snuffing a candle. This is a season of new colours overseas, but in New Zealand we remain untouched by it. A putty-col-oured pall hangs over everything, including our outlook.