ARCADIA DE LUXE

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 10489, 14 October 1926, Page 7

ARCADIA DE LUXE

LIFE AT THE LIDO.

PYJAAIA LUNCHEONS

Socialist speakers who offer us revelations about “Society with the mask off” are mo conservative. At the Lido in July or August you can see cosmopolitans with almost everything off. Some of the frequenters of this Venetian batliing beach may have lost their innocence of soul but—* within very lenient police limitations—they can still achieve innocence of dress. Throughout July and August this long, low, narrow island winch separates the silver lagoon from the golden Adriatic becomes an international Arcadia wnere the artifices of fashion are forsaken and all but.', the flimsiest veils are laid aside. Here the best-dressed women of Europe and America abandon the aid of art and content themselves, with the lightest and tightest of bathing costumes, not only on the beach and the tennis court, but for paying calls and lunching, in restaurants as well. Men for whom the sot of a shirtfront is normally a serious' matter are satisfied with loss than the attire of a South Sea Islander.

LIPSTICKS AND PEARLS

The Lido is the only fashionable place in Europe where you could get out of bed and walk straight into a crowded restaurant without attracting attention. That familiar nightmare of finding oneself out of doors with practically nothing on loses all significance here, for nobody would take any notice. In fact, it is the converse which lias become disagreeable. Among so many undraped and half-nude anyone fully dressed feels uncomfortably, conspicuous. If Eve herself were to appear at the Lido her apron of fig-leaves would pass for the latest dress “model”’ instead of the earliest. But in this Garden of Eden temptation would need costlier bait than an apple. For the life of the Lido is simple only on the surface. Modern life remains artificial, even when nearest to. Nature. Innocence here uses a lipstick, and on sunbronzed wrists necklaces of perfect pearls, twisted tight for safety, gleam again in the sea that shaped them-

The illusion that life in a state of nature is free and equal is quickly lost at the Lido. There are parts of the beach where it is more expensive to live in a state of nature than with all the complexities of civilisation elsewhere. For the sands of this seashore are divided into degrees of exclusiveness. The liahit of social selection persists even in the nude. Rows of bathing cabins, five or six deep, face the sea for over two miles, but the very best class of cubicle at the Lido is only to be found on the private Excelsior beach, where blue blood and big bank balances from all overthe world are now strongly represented.