THE NEW RUSSIA

Taranaki Daily News, 24 August 1935, Page 15 (Supplement)

THE NEW RUSSIA

ONE ’of the most marked changes to come M over Soviet Russia of late has beerithe return of interest in clothes shown by women. During the first few years of the republic an interest in feminine adornment was supposed to represent aristocratic or bourgeois leanings and was sternly discouraged. Stray visitors from other parts of Europe, peering interestedly at the drab, depressing streets of Moscow or of Leningrad, were depressed even further by those scurrying figures of down-at-heel , women rushing to and from their jobs in clothes that were almost uniforms of dinginess. But even the Bolsheviks »cannot change human reactions towards beauty, i Maybe the fiercest commissaires found their spirits de? pressed, too, and felt their vitality lowered in consequence. Maybe the women quietly but definitely determined on a sartorial Revolution of their own. Whatever the reason,' it is true to-day, at any rate, that you may see slim, silk-stockinged legs crossing the Red Square and they will not be the legs of foreign visitors , only. * For the Russian woman, of all other women in Europe, needs careful dressing, and depends far more on chic than on physical beauty. You may think this strange,' remembering those glamorous stars of the ballet, those charming, graceful Russians who, scattered abroad by the revolution, took every capital by storm with their beauty. But divest them of their careful hairdressing, their chic, if shabby clothes, their elaborate'makeup and what is left? In nine cases out of ten, a heavy, face with protruding cheek-bones/ small eyes deeply sunk, and thick lips. The Slav countenance, above all others, needs ' camouflage, but when suitably framed, its bestpoints brought out and its worst disguised, it glows with a beauty of its own, all the more intriguing because so unlike that of the Latin or the Angl6-Saxon races. Soviet Russia has found that it cannot, . after all, get along without beautiful women. That is why you come across them once more in the restaurants and hotels of the capital. 'That is why cheap, smart clothing can again be obtained in the big stores. Foreign women visiting Russia to-day often make the mistake of leaving their evening toilettes at home. Believe me, they are needed to match the dinner jackets, and even the “tails,” in which . their Russian escorts will turn up to take them out for the evening.