Gloves.

Otago Witness, Issue 2728, 27 June 1906, Page 73

Gloves.

While gloves in Europe have been growing more and more expensive, owing to the greatly increased consumption of high grade skins for the lining of motorcars and other similar purposes, it seems thai in America they have been suffering from a positive glove famine ! For just as in London and Paris every well-dressed woman has no choice left her except to wear long white or very pale biscuit gloves, so in the U.S.A. .-the inexorable demands of fashion have insisted that black glace kid gloves of 16 to 20 button length are "the thing," and nothing else can be admitted to "do just as well." The result has been that, as all their high grade gloves on that side are imported, the supply has fallen lamenetably short of tha demand, and the drapers have been doling them out by ones and twos, where the customers have been clamouring for half-dozens and dozens.

Fortunately for the belles of New York, these black gloves are neither so perishablo nor so pretty as the white ones that ou* own elegantes have been wearing ; otherwise, they might have been compelled to go without gloves altogether. Th? truth is that to obtain a really high grade long glove of soft glace kid is an extremely difficult matter, as the quality of the skin turns upon the breed of goat in the first place, and upon the excellence of the pasture in the second.

Grenoble, in the south-east of France, still holds its own as the centre of the glove industry, as the kids there are tended Tvith the greatest care, with a view to producing skins that are at once soft, strong, and pliable, with great fineness of grain and complete freedom from blemishes. In order to obtain the finest quality of kid skin the animal must be killed before it begins to eat grass at all, as from that moment the skin tends to become hard and coarse.

It is not generally known that the cheaper kinds of suede gloves are made from skins that have been split in half, so that one skin is, as it were, used twice over. Gloves of glace kid cannot be made in this way, which is no doubt one of the reasons why the latter have cained

!so very much in popularity since the fashion of wearing short, sleeves bias directed so much special attention to the question of gloves. It is quite a mistake to suppose that the wearing of long kid gloves is a new fashion, for there is a description of a pair of wedding gloves -of white kid, 22 1 inches long, and drawn in above the elbow, which were worn as long ago as 1675. The famous French authority on 'historical costumes, Octave Uzanne, de1 clares that in the time of the Empire long \ gloves were absolutely <Ie rigueur, and, i although they were ruinously expensive, j no lady who aspired to being considered I well dressed could possibly do with less j than a new pair every day. I Unfortunately for ladies with limited j dress allowances, the same thing is true at the present day, and is likely to continue so as long as the elbow-sleeve remains in vogue. Nothing is more annoyinp; for a lady than to find, after a considerable expenditure of time and patience over putting on a pair of gloves ! thar have cost a very stiff price to begin I with, either that they give at the seams } or at the stitching at the back, or that the actual kid itself tears. The latter is caused by careless "planing" on the part of the workman who dresses the skin and lets his knife slip, while the former disaster is even more inexcusable, as it is almost always the resolt of tTie gloves having been stitched with a blunt noedle. These two things are the cause of much unnecessary annoyance and bad language on the part of fashionable ladies.