Women’s Ways

Southland Times, Issue 21773, 30 July 1932, Page 17

Women’s Ways

Mother at 53. Lord Riddell, president of the Medi-co-Legal Society, told the Society (states a report in the Lancet) that he once offered a prize of £4O for the discovery of the oldest mother, and the winner was a woman of 53 years 224 days. Dr J. Bright Banister said that early last century it was stated that a woman, aged 69, had given birth to a child, but it was now agreed that there could be no childbirth after the age of 52. Dress Shows for Husbands. The latest innovation in the Fashion World is Dress Shows for Husbands. A clever London woman dress designer is arranging a Dress Show every Thursday afternoon between 5.30 and 6.30 so that husbands may attend to see and criticize the dresses chosen by their wives, whose bills they are expected to pay! Garden Witchballs. A charming fashion that will appeal to women now that thoughts are beginning to turn again to garden days has been imported to this country from the Tyrol, the wonderland of flowers. It is the use of a witchball on a tall stick, to reflect the flowers and increase the impression of masses of blooms. A favourite place for it is in the herbaceous border. It lias a practical as well as an aesthetic use, for the hollow ball is a splendid trap for garden pests, as the peasants of the Tyrol know well.

Brisk Business in Eyelashes. The most novel beauty innovation for years is the vogue for false eyelashes. I went with a friend to a famous hairdressing salon and watched while she had beautiful, long, curling “lashes” secured to her own rather short ones, in order the further to beautify her for presentation at Court (writes a Londoner). The equipment consists of quarter-crescent bits of coarse hair in a tiny box, a bottle of adhesive lotion and a bottle of “remover.” The “patient” reclines comfortably in a chaise-longue for anything from one to two hours while a -beauty specialist (with an infinity of patience!) attaches, by means of a small pincer-like instrument and the adhesive lotion, a false eyelash to each real one. The “operation” costs from one to two guineas and the lashes re-, main on for anything from a fort--1 night to six weeks.

A Coveted Cup. Miss Audrey Russell, an English girl, has won the Poetry Society’s Challenge Cup, presented to her by the Italian Ambassador for verse reading and foreign languages. This is the first time the cup has been won by a woman. Air-Taxi Girl. An English girl of 18, Miss Winifred Drinkwater, of Renfrew, has made flying history by qualifying for her “B” (commercial pilot’s) licence. Her success makes her the youngest professional pilot. She intends taking tip air-taxi work in Scotland. “Socks Appeal” Divorce. Because his wife wore fancy coloured socks instead of long stockings, and thus exposed her shapely calves to the eyes of other men, a Berlin husband has been granted a divorce. 1 The husband said that his chief reason for marrying her was that his wife, before marriage, professed to share his own abhorrence of “indecent modern dress that exposes half the body to prying glances.” Society Girls’ Latest. Eight society girls who offered their services for a season as Spa hotel chambermaids are mentioned by Mr R. C. Vaughan at the conference of the British Health Resorts Association at Llandrindod Wells recently. Their object, he said, was to “reinforce their depleted fortunes. Here in Landdrindon Wells in charge of a hotel garage,” be continued, “is a young lady of superior education who finds her present work more interesting than fox-hunt-ing or driving her own car.’’ Many public schoolboys were entering hotel service and he mentioned that a young peer and a judge’s son were among the recent recruits. The young woman referred to is employed at one of the biggest hotels in Landdrindon ‘ Wells. She is in charge of the motor garage. When a reporter saw her she refused to give her name,, but chatted happily about her work and said she liked her , "place.”

Miss 1932’s Poise. The picture of “The Rowing Girl,” by Mr Lancelot Glasson, which some critics chose as the picture of this year’s Royal Academy, was painted in his Kensington studio from studies made on the banks of the Thames. “Perhaps the reason why my picture has created so much notice,” Mr Glasson said, “is that I appear to have been struck by a new idea. The athletic river girl has not been done before. After all, it is the healthy girl that the artist admires to-day, not the sloping shouldered type of 60 and 70 years ago. The rowing girl has health and poise.” Why the “Perm” is Permanent. Mr W. T. Astbury, of Leeds University .revealed recently to 400 wives and sweethearts of Britain’s most famous scientists the secret of the “perm” —why a permanent wave does not come out on wet days. “Human hair,” he explained, “has—like everything else—a certain crystalline form, in which the molecules are arranged like a coiled chain. When the hair is stretched during waving the molecules arrange themselves in a totally different way—the chain is stretched out like a ladder, but if it gets wet then the chain begins to close up again and the wave disappears. But when steam is applied while the hair is stretched, then the ladder-like formation is fixed and the wave becomes permanent until it grows out. Wool acts in exactly the same way, and a permanent wave in the hair has just the same effect as pressing a pair of trousers has on the wool of the material.”