BARE KNEES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 16 June 1926, Page 3

BARE KNEES.

SEVEN OUNCE FROCKS. FASHION SECRETS. (From the London “Evening News.’’) Her knees beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, stole in and out As if they feared the light. But oil! she dances such a way— No sun upon an Easter day Is half so fine a sight! Of course the old poet really said “feet” and not knees. But that was simply because he didn't live long enough to know anything about the modes of 1926. .We privileged folk, who were allowed inside the e'oscly-gnarded Drapery Exhibition- which the Lord Alayor opened recently, know better. For at one end of the great hall —the climax of a hundred secrets of taslnon which were revealed to the favoured few —were some mannequins wearing the new turned-down, stockings. Their knees were bare. We caught glimpses of them as the haughty girls floated gracefully to and fro. “MARK AIL WORD.” “Yes,” said the man in charge, “that'll be Tie new fashion in stoexings. Alark my word, you’ll sec scores of bare knees in London this summer.” Just off the main hall, where a hundred mannequins were floating about in a hundred marvellous frocks, it was being whispered that dresses will be just as short this summer as last. “You can see that for yourself,” said one authority, pointing to some of the frocks. ‘ Preparing for the bare knees?” I asked. “Ah!” cried the authority, “officially wo in this part.of the Exhibition don’t know anything about knees. But I’ll tel! you this. Women this summer will wear less than ever.” “They can’t,” I said. “They' can—and will,” lie declared. And I am able to tell the women of London (who are not allowed inside the Royal Agricultural Hal! to lind out for themselves) that he is right. 1 am sure of that because I went round and found out the exact amount of clothes that the fashionable women will wear. Here is the table of weights Frocks 7oz Underclothing 6oz Stockings - loz Shoes 16oz

Total 30oz Tbi's heats last year’s record by several ounces. “Our •.flimsiest stockings weigh much less than an ounce,” said an expert. He picked up two wisps l of diaphanous silk. “See these? They weigh only a. quarter of an ounce and they cost four and a half guineas. You could blow them away with a breath, yet there are 10 miles of silk in them.” ( “JUST FASHION.” As for the dresses—well, there was one being worn by a dainty mannequin which would only' just have turned the scales at three ounces. Let us hope it «is a warm summer. There was quite a little cluster of 1 l people round the bathing dress pavilion. .We gazedi entranced at. the wax maidens, who stood as though petrified in the act of diving into a layer of sand. Probab'y' they had just noticed the absence of .water, and had thought better of it. The new bathing dress is less .daring than last year. It insists on resembling an ordinary afternoon frock. In fact,'a

woman could walk down Regent Street in it and not be noticed. “It’s just the fashion,” said the man who designed it. “Take that one over there, for instance. It looks like an ordinary dress, doesn’t it, with its little licit and no forth. Vet a woman emud made out to sea in it and not spoil it. QUICK CHANGES. “Of course, we do make thinner ones. ' I’ve got one which only weighs a couple of ounces and could he nut comfortably into a small purse. The most open.sive cost 17 guineas.” IJt was quite an embarrassing experience for a man to walk through the Gibley' Hall. There were a hundred mannequins gliding about among the rainbow arrays of dresses—slim and plump, dark and fair. “We, have all sorts of mannequins now,” said the man who was in charge oi 20 of them. “We have plump ones to show dresses to plump won.ten, tluu ones for thin women, and so on. I They’re hard workers, too. Perhaps they don’t look it when you see thenr I lounging about: but each one of them I weare about 150 different dresses in a | day-—something like £IOOOO worth of

beautiful l'rotks. “Tliey’rc a'l quick-change artists.” i “SUBDUED” STOCKINGS. The 'fashionable dress colours this year will bo shades of rose, blue mid pale green. Stockings will lia.ve six new colours : —Chartreuse, nacre rose, dollar, nacre violine, Bacchus, Manon. “London won't see any vivid stockings,” ] was assured. “All the pinks aro vanishing in favour of more subdued shades. Personally 1 think them dull and rather uninteresting; but then that’s the fashion. “A relieving feature is the diamante gnrtei-s woven into some of the stockings.” in this women’s paradise there are just a few glimpses of men’s clothes. I gathered that men’s pull-overs vill he brighter. In fact. T saw s.ono so dazzling with f’heir splashes of icarlet and yellow that I positively blinked.