LONGER SKIRTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 17 March 1928, Page 17

LONGER SKIRTS.

NEVER AGAIN

One wishes to respect the aged, but that does not .prevent one from wishing, too, that the dear old ladies and gentlemen who attain tlie aig-e of a hundred or theerabouts would find some other way of celebrating the event than announcing that they think kneet’i 1.2 t1i skirts dreadful, and that modern girls who wear them ought to be smacked.

Any skirt is stupid, because it attempts to join together what Nature has put asunder, but if .skirts are to be worn at all, there are only two possible lengths—knee or ground. The kneu'-length .shows a complete limb, the ground-length no limb, and any other length outs the limb in two. Could anything be more ungraceful? FOOLS IN T PLUS FOLKS. Why do humorists always pick out plus fours a.s the article of men’s chinmost suitable to make jokes about? Why does a man who is adorable in knee breeches, and irresistible in a dress suit, look a fool in plus fours? Because plus fours are the only garment in a. man’s wardrobe which cuts hie legs in half. As a plump sister said mournfully to me, in the days when women wore half-and-halfs, ‘My legs are quite shapely when you oee all of them ; it’s only when they are cut in half that they look so. awful." Now she wears short skirts,' looks bonny and feels happy. Of course, when we come to crinolines and bustles and things it is another matter. In the days of crinolines women were not supposed to look like human beings. It was the height ■;f indelicacy to do so. They might look like flowers or powder puffs, or anythin,o- else they liked, so long as they suggested no resemblance to tne human, form. So in their tiny bodies and enormous •kiits there looked like frilly fuchsias, or inverted iu'.l-blown roses. If they showed no leg, they showed the whole iovelv line of the shoulder, and the whole arm except the ugly little hit where it joins on, which they were wise eiiougn to cover with a tiny puff. THE VICTORIAN SILHOUETTE. The Victorian .silhouette was pretty in its own way —even the bunched skirts of Du 'Maimers Punch ladies were not unpleasing. Certainly both crinoline and trailing skirt charitably hid mnnv deficiencie, hut ohviouly they cannot return. The modern woman is a real person, not an flower. She knows too much about microbes to want her K lcirt to trail on the ground. She could not golf or drive a car, or even get into a pose- war houise—to say

nothing of a bus—in a wide or i noli up. Tlie "ground-length, therefore, being out of the question, there remains only the knee-length, until .such time as woman becomes, wise enough to wear knee breeches for other things than riding. The fight for sensible dress has been long and hard. Freedom of limb is as important as Tree Com of rnriid—indeed, it. is doubtful whether it is possible to have full freedom of mind without freedom of limb. Physical stuffiness has a dreadful way of spreading to tit? mind ana spirit. IF WOMEN ARE WISE. If women are wise they will disregard ihe opinions of their great-grand-mothers and of anyone else who grumbles at the. simple, healthy fashions of to-day. Shorter * skirts by all means. Shorter and shorter and shorter, until thev disappear altogether, the sooner the better, but longer —no, not if a million women reach the age of a hundred!