SHEIK AND FASHIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20324, 3 August 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

SHEIK AND FASHIONS.

WOMEN OF THE WEST.

& CHAMPION OF FEMINISM. " Women's fashions! They are not significant, they will change. Tha skirt so short, tho arm and neck bare, tho hair cut off —it is not the best fashion for your intellectual women of the West."

That, is the dictum of Sheik Seif bin Suleiman, a nobleman from Zanzibar of the Royal line of Muscat, Oman, and Zanzibar, who is attending the Sultan on his traveb abroad.

The sheik is in his forties, and has a Cairo degree—but only one wife, though the laws and customs of his country allow him four. He is a champion of sex equality—for the women of thi West but not the East. He hails Miss Margaret Bondfield, England's first woman Cabinet Minister, with enthusiasm. "It is good, I congratulate you," he said in an interview.

The triumph of feminism at the elections did not surprise the sheik, for when asked if he found it strange that Britain should elect 14 women members to Parliament his reply was: "Not strange, but very progressive indeed." "If women are to be equal in tho world of affairs with men, I understand that they need dress to give them freedom and little trouble," he said. " But the present fa'shions will not last. The younger womeu in Zanzibar are wearing Western clothes; short skirts beneath the bui-bui (robe and veil) and in tho harem, and very pretty French shoes. Some of them have their hair cut, but they have not yet begun to dance and play games as their Western sisters do. " I have talked with many charming and intellectual London women. They are ready for their equality with men. But the women of the East?—not yet."