Whim of Fashion

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17607, 24 October 1931, Page 10

Whim of Fashion

DBITAIN ’B busiest business men are I vendors of leathers —real ostrich i for preference— imitations if they can | be found. .Since women started wearing the "Bowler” hat, the ••Robin Hood” and the feather merchants jin London have forgotten all about ; trade depression. . A . I They are selling, htige quantities of j feathers, some of which have bpen in stock since 1913. They are sending S.O.S. cables to j South Africa to see if something can not be done to, make i ostriches grow quicker and in reply South African furiuers are asking ! London to supply special oversize ' oatrict egg incubators. The trouble jis that ostriches, take two years for, j feathers to' fetich. ; maturity—and 'if j supplies fail the fashion may bb ifbfu’idoned. Eighteen years*'iigb South, Africa had 800,000 ostriches; :r; Ndiv’ she has about 10,000. How to bridge the gup of two years is the problem worrying merchants, who see renewed fortune almost in their grasp. Almost, but perhaps not for long anyway, for women's fashions change between the setting and rising of the sun—and feather vendors having secured tens of thousands, of costly decorations, may whke up one fine morning to find they must put thorn in moth bags, perhaps lor another 15 years. They pray, meanwhile, that long dresses may hold, the Held l —for sweeping feathers and knee-high skirts might piove too much even for modem women.