SOCIETY TORTURE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18518, 15 March 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

SOCIETY TORTURE

RETURN OF LONG FROCKS. Help! The most awful happenings are being reported from overseas because of the return of the long frock to the ballroom (writes “Lady Kitty” in the “Adelaide Observer”). At a recent smart ball in London, more anklelength frocks were worn than any other more. Long and flowing or

tight and constricting, they almost touched the ground all the way round. Moving, in some cases, was extremely difficult, and as their wearers were unaccustomed to trammelled limbs, more than one guest tripped and fell. One fair lady, forgetting that she was hobbled, stepped out jauntily, tripped, and fell headlong down half a dozen steps. Well, black eyes and broken noses cannot inflict more pain and disfigurement than sun scald. New modes are thus but a new form of Society torture.

Lady Louis Mountbatten, who was noted for the extreme brevity of her short skirts, never hesitates, but goes the whole hog when Fashion distates; and the white frock she wore at the aforementiofied ball was the longest in the room. The long wraith-like draperies caused a poetic guest to exclaim: “Some of these women look like modern, beautiful and elegant incarnations of the witches in Macbeth, their fingernails blushing as though coloured in the gore of a hecatomb of goats.”

Smart women, who have been ridiculously trying on new winter modes in January’s heat, tell me that figures are all up under the chin, as It were, and waists are ever so high to keep them there. Believe me, once the freedom of our dear, darling short skirts has been taken from us (and by the hedressmakers of Paris, save the mark), there will be no end to the shackles placed on our liberty by Fashion. The next move will be pulled-in corsets and boned bodices! Mark my words!