CLOTHES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19905, 27 September 1926, Page 12

CLOTHES.

The rules which govern women’s dressing appear in many cases to be simply reversed for men. For instance, their clothes should not he noticed. Women’s emphatically should. Women should be before all things neat and soignees, but excessive neatness and care are distinctly unattractive when found in men. Smartness in men is repellent in the extreme. Analyse the “smartly” dressed men of your acquaintance. You will find that, though perhaps only a few of them are vulgar, nearly all of them are stupid. Beware of those whose tics, socks, and shirts match, There is something wrong with men who are not a little absentminded about their clothes. I write as 1 feel, but 1 shall be told that as a woman I know nothing about it, and probably rightly so, for men are bad critics of the clothes of women. (It women only knew men’s blind indifference to the effects which have cost them the eyes out of their heads, with hours of thought and skill thrown in '.) They sometimes get, it is true, a general impression of rightness or wrongness, but I have known them select for praise the most colossal blunders and pass over unnoticed subtle and flawless perfection. How often I have heard—and had—the following conversation with a man, any man, on leaving -a party: Woman: “What a lovely frock So-and-so was wearing!” .Man: “Was she? 1 never noticed it—what colour was it?” Woman: “There, there'.” Man: “Oil, (bat! —that sandy, dusty, nondescript tiling? I can't see anything in that!” (This of a priceless (.'allot or Cheruit model.) “Now, B~—she looked very 7 well. I thought, in that sort of Damey orange thing.” Woman; “B!—poor thing—she was looking monstrous! Y'ou can’t seriously mean you admired her.” Man: “Never saw her look fief ter.” No, decidedly—it is no nse dressing for men.—Violet Bonham Carter, in Good Housekeeping.