SILK STOCKINGS BOOM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 105, 6 May 1933, Page 15 (Supplement)

SILK STOCKINGS BOOM

EVERY GARMENT KNITTED. ‘•The City of Leicester, aided and abetted by fashion, is determined to dress women from head to toe in the products of its knitting mills.” writes a special correspondent of the Daily Mail. Fashion has decreed that knitted garments are ‘‘the correct wear,” and Leicester is not behind in seizing the €»pportunity of presenting women with the newest shades and designs in the garments of the moment. There is, apparently, not one article of feminine clothing, with lhe exception of shoes, which the knitting machines are incapable of making. ‘‘British women realise that silk stockings and other knitted goods made at Leicester are as good as the fashionable products of Paris have ever been supposed to be, ami, moreover, they are determined to ‘buy British.’ “I visited a number of the Leicester factories, and f was told that one of them alone knits and turns out 78,000 dozen pairs of silk stockings and men’s socks each week to copo with the demand. “Machines, which are miracles of ingenuity, fashion’these cobweb-like silks for a thousand types of women.

“Leicester is also making those jaunty little caps which women are wearing and jumpers, knitted suits, underclothing scarfs, gloves, skirts—everything, in fact, that a woman needs and even ‘stump’ socks to be worn by disabled ox-soldiers over their amputated limbs. Of these latter socks 20,000 dozens a year are made by one fi rm. ‘‘l here is no falling off in employment in this factory, where the working conditions are an exampie to employers throughout the world. The rooms in which young girls work at machines are spacious, airy, and well lighted, and great rare is taken not to tax the .young employees beyqnd their capacity. Among its other industrial successes Leicester points with pride to an enterprise started by two men before lhe I war in an attic, ami has now developed mto the vast Woollen Mills, employing more than 1000 people in making the famous woollen garments. Lady Mount Temple, whose husband was formerly Mr. Wilfrid Ashley, the exMinister of Transport, was aiso visiting the factories, and told me how immensely impressed she was. It is an inspiration to see what British brains ami labour are doing,’ she said to me. ‘lt is cheering to see this industry forging ahead in this determined way. ’ ’ *