SHOPPING HABITS AND CHANGES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 42, 4 October 1911, Page 3

SHOPPING HABITS AND CHANGES.

According to a lady observer who lias boon writing to an English paper, there are some curious changes in women’s shopping-''habits this year. She

says:—Nowadays women do not buy to keep. The cry is all for ready-to wear garments, a custom which comers from America, and whose convenience has endeared it. to every woman, stock size or otherwise. The result is that a heat wave clears all the counters of made-up muslins and linens, and leaves the remnants of piece materials and coats and skirts severely alone. Never in a long experience ol the trade have such reductions been effected in piece materials, and yet they have not sold. Behind tl is state of affairs appears the small dressmaker, olio formerly lived by making-up and renovating for the sales shopper. The small dressmaker finds that it is more orofitable to turn her attention to making for the big firms. 'The number of such workers is greatly on the increase',* and the difficulty of •retting a good drcssma-cer is a problem. The big firms pay ready monov; the woman customer is by no means so dependable. Then, too,

the small dressmaker fines in nci turn that assistants ureter the life; hours, and surroundings of the big firm to her smaller premises. So wheels work within wheels, and the modern woman of moderate means is fast making for what people call the ‘reach-mo-tlnwn’ standard of dress, as the sales this season 1 avo testified.”