THE PLAINT OF THE FINE WOMAN

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12181, 4 July 1925, Page 15

THE PLAINT OF THE FINE WOMAN

(By

Sydney Sydney.

The old man. who had been asserting that women’s fashions changed too often, had just left us. Lorna stood, Junoesque and magnificent, by the open window. “Idiot!” she said, “if he only knew, the real trouble is that fashions don’t change quickly enough.” Lorna has nothing unusually extravagant or changeable about her, 60 I looked at her inquiringly. “They don’t change quickly enough to give us all a look in, I mean. Now, when first I had an allow mice and wore clothes of my own choosing —just over ten years ago—l rather piided myself on my ‘chic.’ I was promenading on a certain plage one day, feeling certain that my costume was worthy of any couturier, when a woman with a good carrying voice dashed my conceit. ‘Well, there are no contours about that!’ she remarked to her companion as I passed. “She was right. The freshness of youth is always the freshness of youth, but when we were young we could still envy our elders for they alone could usually show off clothes properly. For years I bemoaned my skinniness—as, no doubt, women have done through the ages, with the exception of a few modern periods of, I think, unnatural taste.

“Then, as I lost my pristine charm (or what I imagine must have been Fristino charm) I gained the contours had wanted. Has it helped me to wear my clothes? On the contrary, over since I had a figure, figures have been right out of fashion. Women -carve, strain, and strap themselves out of what almost every other generation would have considered their proper beauty. “I’m sure the thin women, secure in the support of La Mode, have called the rest of us ‘fat’ long enough. The next change in fashion is over due, and the sooner it comes tho better.” I wonder how many other women are longing for Dame Fashion to take a turn, literally, and go in for curves instead of straight lines for a year or two ? One of the steepest streets in the French seaport of Havre is to have an escalator instead of the pathway.