EXTRAVAGANCE IN .DRESS

Grey River Argus, 28 January 1911, Page 7

EXTRAVAGANCE IN .DRESS

•Miss Emily Post, in the Girl's Own Paper, writes on the cost of women's clothes. She says (foere has been an increase in the price of millinery of almost six hundred .per cent, and the quantity mow considered necessary for a woman of fashion has trebled tor quadrupled. Where :t\vo or three hats were once thought enough for a season _> a dozen would to-day seem no more extravagant. She men 'tions a. hat trimmed with ostrich plumes that cost "fifty guineas, and pairs of shoes costing eight, ten, or fifteen guineas a pair. Where the most elaborate evening- dresses were once sold' for 'thirty guineas, scores now sell at forty up to a hundred guineas. The cause of this extraordinary increase is said to be that of

late years English society has been flooded with American multi-million-airesses an addition to the very new •ly rich English. The American woman is clothes mad; nowhere do avomen spend so much on their personal adornment as in America. Nowhere in the world, says the writer, does one see the same elaborate dressing, save among the declasse women abroad. On the Continent the women of high nobility amd social position are like wrens compared with these ■cockatoos of the half-wortd. It is an unpleasant thought that it is the latter who set the -standard which our fashionable women follow with inaive 'idity. The Paris millinery and dressmaking houses habitually send their models to Sunday horse-races, wearing fashions they are trying to launch, and our travelling countrywomen see these things, with their owm 'eVt^, .anA (home with "the latest thing they are wearing in Paris." The result of this extravagance is that with too many women the new season comes with last season's clothes not j^et paid for. Talking with oiie of the smartest women in society, the writer asked her how much she used to dress on when she was a young married woman ; £100 a year. To-day, however, she spends ;£IOOO with fuss and worry to manage it at that". The writer asks, why do women of moderate means try to equal their richer sisters in clothes when they would not think--of trying to compete with them in any other form of expendtiure? The writer recommends the. example of the French women, who never forget their background in the building of their wardrobe. A Frenchwoman thinks a great deal about her clothes, but she thinks twice as much about the way she puts them on.