“FASHIONS" FOR MEN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18068, 20 April 1933, Page 10

“FASHIONS " FOR MEN

EXHIBITION IN LONDON LITTLE ORIGINALITY LONDON, Fob. 23. Nothing amuses women more than tlio frantic but unavailing efforts of the male sex to achieve sartorial emancipation. Lacking female courage and inventiveness, men flounder along from year’s end to year’s end in clothes that are as unsightly as they are uncomfortable, and for sheer want of pluck they endure a thousand martyrdoms. Halfhearted attempts have been made from time to time to persuade the enslaved sex to adopt brighter colors and more sensible “designs,” but without result.

All this was painfully obvious at this week’s exhibition of men's wear at Borland Hall. Regent street, where trade buyers were allowed access to the latest masculine mysteries of dress. Their eyes dwelt ecstatically upon the rainbow colors of neckwear, shirts, pyjamas, dressing gowns, and sports suits —for men are brave enough at night and during their hours of recreation —but, except for a “line” of green trousers, they looked in vain for anything really bright in ordinary attire. The eternal blacks, greys, browns, fawns, and blues were there in lavish display, but there was a complete absence of material upon which the reformer might hope to build. Not, of course, that a thorough-going reformer could he found in London, but it would he nice to think that were such a. hero suddenly to appear in our midst, lid would have some backing from inventive man ufacturers.

The only sign of originality in the exhibition was the presence of a “new” hat. At least, it was new in the sense that it harked back to the fashion of the 'eighties—the curly ’eighties. It had a curly brim and a rather saucy air suggestive of Leicester Square in the gay days of hansom cabs and midnight lounges. But there is not, the slightest possibility of its ever being worn, for the measure of masculine inefficiency is that men abhor a change even more than nature hates a vacuum. The new creation is called “The Camber Hat,” and has been designed by the Hatters’ Style Research Association, which seems to have gone to. no end of trouble for nothing.