AIRY, FAIRY LILLIAN.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 1915, 8 September 1921, Page 3

AIRY, FAIRY LILLIAN.

SENSIBLE WOMAN, FOOLISH MAN A complete summer girl's heal wave outfit that will go through the letter post for one penny under a shilling is the latest fashion advertised in England. The flapper seems to have realised that lower blouses and shorter skirts might not be found to possess those artistic qualities which Euclid ascribes to parallel straight linos, and consequently she has sought a solution of the problem ’of how to keep cool by discarding items of dress hitherto regarded as- essential, and reducing the weight of essential garments to the minimum. The whole outfit is said to weight 9i ounces, and comprises a muslin frock of Goz., two garments' unspecified and vaguely described in the cables as "undies,” which weigh when taken together another two uncos, silk stockings at one ounce, and garters at one half ounce. The muslin dress will impartial! air of transparent innocence to its wearer while the whole outfit will give a refreshing idea of coolness in the sultry weather that is being experienced in England this summer. Fashion in women’s dress is very largely dictated by hygienic considerations. The modern ball dress owes its origin to the use of electric light and th« beneficial influence exerted by rays on the complex nervous system radiating from llio spinal cord. Short, skirts wefe due to the discovery that skirts too near the ground collected microbes, and high heels were devised in order to life the wearer as far as possible from these same microbes. When doctors began to preach the value of fresh air we got the blouse that was designed to extend these benefits to the neighbourhood of the bronchial tubes, while openwork stockings combined with the short skirts to allow a free current of air to play on the important muscular system that, makes for locomotion. Many theatrical costumes are designed with the view of enabling their wearers to keep a normal temperature of 95.4 iu the close atmosphere of the footlights.

While women are thus seeking to make hygiene the first consideration in dress, men are mainly governed by traditional ideas of respectability. The lightest outfit so far designed for male attire weighs 41b. 15oz. In the most tropical heat of summer, men cling to the black coat for office wear, and they keep all air away from the throat by wearing hard, stiff, uncomfortable collars. They continue to wear hats that blow away in a gale of Wind just the very time when they are most needed. They cling'tp a pattern of dress suit that was in vogue in the days of Victoria the Good, and most of them cherish a top hat and a frock coat as an emblem of respectability to be produced at funerals, civic receptions, morning church, weddings, and other functions of a semi-religious character. At a time when women are seeking to emulate the male in the field of sport, men might well try and emulate the female in some of her ideas on dress. The uncomfortable dress adopted by many men in their endeavour to conform to canons of black-coated respectability might with advantage be changed for something more comfortable and more capable of variation with the ever-changing vagaries of our weather. Men’s dress at the present day seems mainly designed, like the judge’s wig, to impress upon others a sense of their dignity and importance, while women dress to create an impression of coolness, transparency, and a primitive simplicity which is often strangely* reminiscent of the days which the marriage service describes as the time of man's innocency.