CORSETS AND CURLS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21553, 16 January 1940, Page 8

CORSETS AND CURLS

ABOLITION PREDICTED LONDON. December 19. Lecturing on “Fashions and War," Mr James Laver, assistant keeper of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, prophesied this week that corsets and curls would disappear in a year or two If the war went on. “Women have always thrown their corsets away and cut their hair in war-time,” Mr Laver said. “They did so in the Napoleonic wars as well as in the late war. We shall probably see three fashion ghosts of the late war come back; beige (the ghost of khaki.) the cloche (ghost of the steel helmet), and the tubular costume (ghost of the field gun).” Mr Laver predicted “with deep regret” that bad manners (the ghost of the sergeant-major’s bellowings) would be coming back as well. Nothin? so closely and accurately indicated the spirit of an age as women’s fashions When modern women took the lead in fashion they led all the other arts as well, even architecture. As an example. Me Lavar cited the “bobbed-hair” and “tubular-skirt” buildings which architects are still designing to-day. Women outgrew this period in their dress early in 1930. and were now in the baroque period of corsets, curls and petticoats. Architecture would catch up with women’s fashions in a few years by going baroque. Furniture and interior decorations had already begun to do so.