BATTLE OF SKIRTS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22512, 16 December 1947, Page 4

BATTLE OF SKIRTS

WOMEN BOW TO PARIS LONDON, Nov. 28. The battle of the hemline is being waged by women everywhere. Every newspaper and fashion magazine and even Cabinet Ministers have given their views on whether women’s skirts should be at least six inches longer, as Paris designers decree, or remain at their present level in order to save valuable material and coupons. Mere males are moved to protest against this downward trend- and Alan Melville—author of one of London’s revue’s “Sweetest and Lowest”, —told listeners to the BBC what he thinks about this new edict.

“What seems odd to me is that if you, a few weeks ago, had shown a lady a photograph of herself taken with skirts that drooped half way between knee and ground level, somewhere in the 1930’s she would have laughed uproariously and pronounced the spectacle as “frumpish and freakish”. Now just because a few persons in Paris—mostly men—have decided that - it’s time to take the female sucker for another ride, and have created a new Plimsoll line, it is apparently le dernier cri.

“It seems odd that at a time when we have less meat, less coal, less petrol and less milk, the only thing we should have more of is skirt. Seems odd to me that after all these years the ladies haven’t made up their minds about their own legs. If they are worried about them let them be hidden.’’