PARIS AND PLEATS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 16 May 1925, Page 15

PARIS AND PLEATS.

The little Paris shop in which linen is ironed within sight of the passer-by is well known in Paris, with its pink paper against which the well-ironed trophies are displayed. And it is a sight to watch the good French ironer at work, for she makes of her ta'sk something exceedingly skilful and even artistic. She must know how to iron all little pleats and waves of the various “bonnets” still worn by a good ljiany Frenchwomen. She is an artist iji pleats. Even the coarse blue aprons worn by the French market-women are hoped up into pleats, and fine linen, of course, is pleated by hand with the same regularity as it is done in other countries by machine. Crepe-de-chine has made further demands on the skill of the laundress. Here, again, she has to be able to pleat swiftly ancj. accurately a material that is very difficult to manipulate. It is perhaps partly for this reason that there is at present a shortage among ironers, even though ironing is better paid than are some French occupations. Recently an ironing branch has been added to the preparatory school of apprenticeship founded by the late Mme. Yiviani. At this school dressmaking is taught in all its branches, including fur-cutting and, of course, pressing and cleaning clothes. The ironing branch deals less with the dressmaking side than with laundry pure and simple. Lessons are given at a very cheap rate indeed, and it is hoped that the teaching will, do something to supplement the lack of workers in what is here a very important industry, indeed. Tt is the. more important in "that it has become, even in the most modern countries, only partly mechanical. There are. washing machines and cleaning machines, and they have been adopted to some small extent by the French. But while the electric iron is freely used, it does not do its own work, and, especially in the aforesaid case of pleats, it needs the greatest manual skill to guide it. T it Paris ironers are wanted in the laundries, and also in the big cleaning establish-, meats, where a great part of the work of pressing is done by band. The pleated dress beloved in France is always repleated by hand, thereby avoiding any necessity for unpicking it.