FASHION GOES TO WAR.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 121, 20 April 1940, Page 11

FASHION GOES TO WAR.

Will war affect our fashions? It already has (writes a correspondent). In Europe women have discarded elaborate and frivolous fashions in favour ot' clothes suitable for war-time work. Out going high-heeled, cut-out shoes. Out go elaborate coiffures that get mussed up under gas-masks. In come plain hair arrangements, sensible shoes and large, hold-all pockets—ior an airraid siren gives no time for a lady to grab her handbag. English women have even climbed into slacks for working hours. But not the French. Eternally feminine, the French woman clings to skirts. Here, in the absence of blackouts and crushing emergency work, wo escape a uniform eclipse. Duty consists of going to first aid lectures, studying up mechanics, working for the lied Cross, knitting, sewing and organising affairs to raise patriotic funds. >So for us, feminine clothes still, to soften wartime grim ness. But clothes that won’t soil and crush easily. Especially for day wear, good wearable clothes that don’t need constant care and attention. But definitely glamorous, feminine, alluring things for evening. That is the way our fashions have gone to war. Dress will play a vital part in keeping us normal and cheerful. Admittedly it is difficult not to let go. But we owe it to our men not to make war an excuse to let up on beauty, which lias such wide, psychological ramifications. How else can we maintain our morale —or our men’s? It is part of a woman’s job to dress gallantly, to be well groomed all the time. To lie, in fact, a joy to jaded eyes, refreshing to war-weary spirits. To bo feminine. And So this time we are not going to fling aside, as we so wrongly did in the last war, that most feminine of all garments, the foundation. It is going to be our best ally in flaunting our charms in the face of war and ail its grimness. Never before has the silhouette been so charmingly feminine. The smallest waist, the most beautifully uplifted and accented bosom we’ve seen in years, are the spotlights of the new flexible foundations seen in the shops this week.