SILK SHORTAGE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4490, 15 October 1941, Page 6

SILK SHORTAGE

WOMEN’S DRESS. “When the silk shortage loomed there was, as everyone knows, a rush of females to buy silk stockings. There was no corresponding rush of males to buy silk neckties or any kind of neckties, in fact. The necktie business probably remained firm, but that was the best that could be said about it. In fact, little was said. A reporter for this newspaper was told by retailers ‘that while women buy a large portion of ties sold, they were not as conscious of the effects of a shortage in that line as in their own apparel, and men just didn’t care about the type of neckwear they wore.’ Any woman who really works at being a woman is conscious of

every article she has on. You could blindfold her and she could tell you that she was wearing the pink dimity with the inserted side pleats, the row of tiny mother-of-pearl buttons down the back, the muslin ruching cleveAj* breaking the line of the dropped but not bent shoulder, and the red velvet sash with simulated ear muffs. There would be no fuzziness about details, although there may be a mistake or two in the details here mentioned, which derive from an imperfect male memory. But ask a man to tell you, without first having a look, what is the colour and pattern of the tie he is wearing. He may know the batting averages in the major leagues, or even the names of places in Russia, but his tie is only that thing around his neck which he picked absent-mindedly from the rack 60 seconds before he grabbed his coffee.”