LONG HAT-PINS AGAIN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 244, 15 October 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

LONG HAT-PINS AGAIN

EIGHT-INCH SKEWERS Women are demanding hatpins again. Not the short, three-inch affairs of ten years back, but the seven or eightinch skewers that, were worn before the war (states the Daily Mail). Their excuse is that they cannot keep the new, shallow-erowued hats in place without pins, and small pins will not grip the hair. bo ten thousand long pins have been ordered from a Birmingham firm, who, since the fashion went out, have been making metal hair clips. “In some cases the hatpins will serve as a trimming. for they are to be worn piercing the crown from back to front, ’ said an official of the London store, who were responsible for the purchase. Weapons of Defence But women will have to be careful to wear protectors, or the authorities may wage war, as they did twenty years ago when long batpins became a public danger. Many Englishwomen will remember how, in the tramwaycars of twenty yeais ago, notices were put up reminding them of the danger of their unprotected pins. And on the occasion of King Edward’s funeral a special appeal to women was issued by the police, begging them not to wear “spear-like pins’’ in the crowd. Men and women brought actions for damages —caused by unguarded hatpins in public vehicles and crowds, and were congratulated in Court. And now and again a woman, losing her head, would attack her rival with the pin she snatched from her hat. Even so late as 1920 a young Cana dian soldier, saying good-bye to his sweetheart after a quarrel, suddenly found her hatpin in his back. But in .1928 long hatpins had disappeared so completely that when the “Show Boat,” was put on at Drury Lane the stage manager of the theatre could not buy them for the old-fashioned hats worn by the women in the cast. He eventually made an appeal to the Daily Mail, which brought pins from all over the country. Many had historic?, among them being some which were worn in “When Hearts Were ’frumps” at Drury Lane in 1899. • Smith: “Are you sure your wife knows I’m coming out over the week-end?” .Tones: “Of course. Didn’t we argue about it for two hours this morning? ’ ’