"MISS 1929."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20243, 1 May 1929, Page 9

"MISS 1929."

HER EPHEMERAL DRESS. [FROM our own correspondent.] LONDON. March Q7. "There was a time when people would pay a little more for a durable garment. The young lady of to-day regards it as a positive disadvantage. She wants to spend as little as she can, and the opportunity, as often as possible, of having a now dress that will come in with the latest fashion."

Mr. A. S. Corayns Carr, K.C., made this observation at the Board of Trade inquiry when opposing tho safeguarding application of the woollen and worsted textile industry. "It is a positive eyesore," continued Mr. Comyns Carr, "if at the end of the season she finds that the dress is not sufficiently worn out to justify her getting a new one. Durability of goods may, therefore, be a disadvantage. It certainly is, in the eyes of tho young lady of to-day, no compensation for any difference in price. The same point of view suits the maker-up, because he earns his profits on the number of garments he can get rid of." The committee heard the evidence of Mr. F. 11. Fox (chairman of Fox Brothers and Company, Limited, of Wellington, Somerset), and of William Bliss and Son, Limited, of Chipping Norton; chairman of the West of England Manufacturers' Association (Woollen) and the West of England Wool Industrial Council.

"I consider tho depression in the wool and textile trade is world wide, due to the reduced demand for woollen goods," he said. "Among tho causes of the reduced demand are the change in women's fashions, for it takes far less material to make a costume than it tised to; substitutes for woollen goods such as silk, artificial silk, and printed cottons, which have come to stay; a great increase in knitted goods owing to the fact that men are spending less money on clothes and more on motoring, sports, and holidays; and tho buying of other goods by instalments and mortgaging the future. Women did not sacrifice clothes for motoring and other amusements."

Thus the Daily Telegraph:— "The ladies, under Mr. Comyns Carr's observation, seem to lack the imaginative faculty. Inability to find justification for getting a new frock is not a general weakness in the sex. Tho natural clesire for new frocks does not generally comprise a desire for rubbish. Women are really almost human in their intelligence, and for frocks which have to stand wear prefer material which will wear. It is unfortunate the defence of free trade should require the assumption that most people have no common sense."