“INDECOROUS ATTIRE.”

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16492, 6 March 1914, Page 6

“INDECOROUS ATTIRE.”

The members of the Australasian Women’s Conference, now sitting in Melbourne, are fully entitled to pledge themselves to “ refrain from the prevailing fashion of indecorous attire,” but we could wish they had been a little more explicit in their denuriciation of the season’s modes. A groat deal of nonsense is being talked about frocks, furbelows and figures by people who seem to have got an jdea that a neat ankle is in • itself an imuropriety, and the Conference might have performed a useful service by explaining just what it meant by an allusion to “shocking and disgraceful displays of indecency.” Some people are able to remember the. days when the orinoline was considered an absolutely essential portion of a woman’s dress and when a skirt unsupported by hcops would have scandalised the community. But those days happily are passed and no sensible person wants to see them brought back. We do not demand in the second decade of tho twentieth century that because a fellow creature happens to have been born a woman she shall wrap herself in shapeless coverings, as though concealment were the whole purpose of dress. Some of the newest fashions are foolish, vp doubt, and in their extreme development they may become actually improper, though they are far more 'ikely to be merely ugly. But tho frocks of to-day obviously are at a transition stage and it is not difficult to realise that the movement is in the direction of graceful, natural lines and a wholesome freedom from merely trammelling draperies. The outcry that is being raised in some quarters might be justified if it were directed against the extravagant excesses of the few, but it is unjust and rather silly when it is made to apply to every woman who lends an ear to Dame Fashion’s dictates. Those strangely constituted people who are shocked by a dress cut low at the neck and outraged by a regulation bathing costume really do not represent any important section of the community. Even they surely would prefer an ultra modern skirt to the trousers and silk Hat that Dr Mary Walker displayed in Washington this week when leading a suffragette demonstration before the American House of Representatives.