MANNEQUIN PARADES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4219, 4 December 1939, Page 4

MANNEQUIN PARADES

A POPULAR FEATURE AT- THE EXHIBITION. WOOL AND FARMING PROSPERITY. A series of mannequin parades at the New Zealand Wool Council’s pavilion in the General Exhibits Court of the Centennial Exhibition has been received with very favourable comment. All the models and garments, novelties and piece goods are wholly of wool. The New Zealand Wool Council is, with the Wool Boards of Australia and South Africa, one of the three partners in the International Wool Publicity and Research Secretariat, which was established, following a representative conference in Melbourne, about three years ago, to further the interests of wool growers of these three Dominions by providing liaison services in Great Britain, Europe and the United States between the producer and the manufacturer and designer of woollen fabrics and fashions, and to foster research into new methods of processing wool to open new avenues for wool in fashion and industry. In the arrangement of the attractive and unusual display and fashion parades at the Exhibition the New Zealand Wool Council has had the full co-operation of the Department of Agriculture, of the New Zealand Mill Owners’ Federation, and of a number of Donfinion manufacturers and dress houses, with, of course, the wholehearted support of the Wool Secretariat, from whose London Office, Bush House, have been despatched “models for 24 hours of the day and 365 days of the year in wool,” with emphasis upon the extremely light weight fabrics for evening wear evolved as a result of recent research, murals and other material to outline what the central Empire organisation has done to widen interest in wool. One section of the display, for farmer visitors, but also of popular interest, is the almost ideal woolshed and yards for a New Zealand sheep station, designed by Mr J. E. Duncan, wool instructor of the Department of Agriculture, scaled down to half an inch to the foot—to the sheep (breed not known), the dogs, shearing and baling plant, dip, crush pens and races, and even the electric light globes, which are probably the smallest in the Exhibition. Copies of specifications, giving measurements of yards and races, quantities of timber and other materials, and engine, shearing plant and lighting lay-outs, are available at the pavilion to those in the wool and sheep industry. A pictorial graph brings out the importance of the wool industry tq the Dominion and also the astonishing facts of flock increase after the first settlement. In 1840 there were no flocks above the dozens and scores, but in 1844 there were in the young Colony 1000 sheep, which clipped 110 bales for home weaving and export; by 1871 the flocks had increased phenomenally to 9.7 millions and the clip to 106,700 bales; by 1900 the floeks had more than doubled, to 19.1 millions, while the clip, as a result of attention to breeding, had increased more than threefold, to 376,000 bales; the 1938-39 flocks rose to the peak of 32.4 millions and the clip to 917,000 bales, sheep and wool products representing 48 per cent, of all New Zealand products. Australia, with 113.9 million sheep is the greatest of the wool producing Dominions, the 1937-38 clip totalling 1,015 million pounds; South Africa has more sheep than New Zealand (43.1 millions) but produces less wool, about 250 million pounds, compared with New Zealand’s 327 million pounds. New Zealand, however, leads in lamb and mutton production over both the other great sheep and wool Dominions. Of the Dominion clip in normal years about 50 per cent, goes to the United Kingdom; France, Japan, the United States and Germany having been our other main customers overseas. The system of wool purchase and disposal by the British Government under a war economy has necessitated considerable changes in the plans of the Secretariat for the time being, and Mr F. S. Arthur, the New Zealand member, has been seconded for du tv with the Ministry of Supply. Research and publicity are none the less being continued, and, in research, intensified along certain lines.