Modes Mirror The Times

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 109, 11 May 1939, Page 14

Modes Mirror The Times

Keeping Up Spirits To-day ?

I’ve got a theory, with which I sometimes bore my friends if they are unwise enough to get on to the subject, that our clothes have a good deal to do with our way of thinking, and viceversa, writes Victoria Chappelle from London. In other words, they mirror our time. It sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But look at an old periodical, say •‘Punch.” of 1860, and study the clothes. All-enfolding crinolines, prim little bonnets and hats, stuffy bodices for day, almost outrageously low ones for the evening.

How prim and prudish were those Victorians, how terrified they were of unpleasant facts, how they could shut their eyes to the poverty and misery around them, even “Punch” mirrored that.

Then send your mind back to the short skirts, ugly hats and uglier hair-dressing of the “noisy nineteen-twenties.” Yes, those skirts and hats and Eton crops interpreted our minds at that time, didn’t they?

And now we are going back to ultrafeminine clothes again, with curls, and fans, and funny little hats. Why, I wonder? Well, it will be interesting, ten years hence, to look back on the fashions which “mirror our time” and to listen to the interpretation of the experts. What will they say? Something like this perhaps: “Things were so uncertain then that women took refuge in clothes that were unpractcal and unusual in order to keep up their courage and their spirits.” In other words, we crown our heads with colour and ostrich feathers as an answer to A.R.P. A pleasant thought!

Knit some thread in with the wool at the heels of stockings to ensure longer wear. • • * * Clean papier mache by washing with soap in cold water and when nearly dry sprinkle with flour and dry with a flannel; then polish with soft duster. • • * • Suede gloves can be quickly cleaned by putting them on the hands and rubbing with a piece of flannel dipped in flour.