THE GAY ’NINETIES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 12 November 1927, Page 17

THE GAY ’NINETIES

,H ;, OW MODES HAVE CHANGED. SIMPLER DRESS, SIMPLER HOME'S How cumbersome a woman’s life used to be! writes Beach Telling in the “Daily Mail.” I have been looking over a bound volume of a still popular magazine for the year 1894, and very provocative of laughter ‘have I found it. How our dresses toyed with the microbes sweping in the dust; how our leg of mutton sleeves flapped in the winds of heaven; how tight our gloves were; what red bands our hideous straw sailor hats, with their hard brims, marked on our brows! WHEN WE “TIRED OUR HAIR.” We reserved the cruellest tortures for our hair, however. Iron entered largely into our hairdressing! 'What heaps of hairpins must have been needed for those elaborate struetues of waves and rolls and coils, the “teapot handles” and “buns” of bygone days. And on the top of all this elaborate architecture we perched our absurd hats, fastening them in their perilous position with long pins jabbed through our longsuffering locks without ruth or pity. Descending a little lower, we tortured our sight with the patterns on our veils spots dancing before our eyes, and on reaching our necks, we clasped them in a strangle-hold, calling bits of whalebone, wire, tightly tied ribbons, and even men’s stiff starched collars to our aid! THE MEETING OF MANY HOOKS AND EYES. ' In those days, too ,every smart dress had one distinguishing feature; you [could not possibly “do it up” yourself And I should imagine it took a highly skilled person to do it up for you. There were hooks There were, of course, also eyes—somewhere 1 But seldom the twain did meet until I much time and patience had been lost. “ILine” was nothing accounted of in the days of Victoria. Trimming was j the thing. I have before me a fashion plate of a garden-party gown, which has flounces, tucks, lace, braid, silk, | insertion, ribbon, and tassels, and is j worn with a picture hat which appears to have everything rn it —except a ‘ fox’s brush! {

Ah, well! Time has brought splendid revenges. Where are the hooks of yesterday? Rusting with the discarded hair-pins. Mrs Shingle and Miss EtomCrop take very little time to slip into those simple frocks of theirs with no fastenings and they look so immediately trim and elegant. We let our necks and our waists and wrists alone; mud or no mud, our skirts are not worth thinking about, and, thanks to this freedom, we do not have colds, or fainting fits, or red faees as we used to do. Delivered from all sorts of fussy detail in our dress Ave have more time to devote to stockings, shoes, and manicure, all of which Avere apt to be a trifle slurred in. years gone by.

A WHIRLWIND THROUGH THE HOUSE.

Having made such a clean sweep of the superfluities of dress, Modern Woman, in her mood for simplifying life, has swept like a whirlwind through the house also. Our homes .to-day are as beautiful as taste and colour can make them, but very bare compared with Victorian standards. THE PASSING OP PONDEROUS.

Gone are 'those massive suites, with the gigantic sideboards, groaning beneath an array of painfully polished " plate.’ * Gone are the pictures, which were not really pictures at all, but only slabs of paint in handsome gilt frames. Gone are the heavy expensive tablecloths and curtains, the terrible "cosy corners,” the meaningless little vases and so-called ornaments, china kittens in baskets, "plaques,” and hand-paint-ed satin cushions. We have learn the beauty of space. These things, home and Dress are outward and visible signs of the way woman has been clearing the decks for action. More remarkable still is the way

shc has swept away such a number of moth-eaten prejudices, and musty conventions from her mind. She is healthier, better educated, better looking than she has ever been; she works more plays more, knows more. And still she goes on—for ever clearing the decks. The worst muddle is tidied up at last, the largest room swept. Then the housewife does one of two things, either she brings in a number of fresh household gods, to replace those that she has swept away, or else she turns her attention to some quite different matter elsewhere.

It will be interesting to see what women will do in he next 50 years. At any rate, the domestic decks are clear-