Wool The Versatile

Northern Advocate, 16 August 1949, Page 4

Wool The Versatile

Wool, so light it can be worn as a glamorous evening gown or a tennis blouse for the great Kay, Stammers, and yet so heavy that it can be blended with gold thread and woven into the one fabric for a hostess gown to delight the heart of any woman... This is the fabric that is the watchword of the New Zealand Promotion Olficer of the New Zealand Wool Board (Miss Mary-Annette Burgess).

From its charming sponsor, who is compering the first all-wool mannequin parade to be shown in Whangarei, tjiis fabric so vital to New Zealand’s economy receives the highest compliment a woman can give any material. She wears wool in a raincoat, a hat, even a matching bag—in everything in fact. In the drive to popularise wool all the ingenuity of scientists has been called on to devise new methods of fashioning material from a medium almost as old as the history of textiles. MIGHT BE SILK Gone are the days of the heavy pink fjannel—take it 4 or leave it. Now wool can be spun put so fine it might be silk. It is done with seaweed-rryes, seaweed. A carrier thread of seaweed is woven into the material along with wool fibres too delicate to be woven in the normal way, and then removed by washing in soap and water. The fabric remaining ,is light and filmy, and yet retains all the advantages of wool. This versatile material has invaded a field hitherto believed impossible for wool. Lace has been made into one of the most beautiful wedding gowns, producing a fabric which will never date. ‘ ADMIRED BY QUEEN A dress of this lace was greatly admired by Queen Mary, and, this garment will be admired by those who see it in Whangarei tomorrow. The tailored light garment field, usually the private preserve of the finest linens, has also fallen to the onslaught of wool. A pair of tailored pyjamas from this type of weave—far too glamorous to be slept in, will also be featured. It is in the full-length, sweeping type of frock, particularly with pleats, that wool reaches its peak. A two-piece evening gown in two weights of wool dyed in the same process shows wool in a beautiful frock, which would remain the pride of any woman's eye, matched wrth a utility cape, combining all the warmth of the heaviest fur with light weight. Wool, shown in all its variations, is portrayed in the models, and even the most hardened cotton and silk convert must succumb tp its appeal and to the enthusiasm of Miss MaryAnnette Burgess for her life workwool.