CRAZE FOR SLIMNESS

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 9 April 1927, Page 10

CRAZE FOR SLIMNESS

FASHION RUINS BAKERS.

LONDON, Feb. 20. Dame Fashion’s laws threaten to ruin—the bakers of Vienna!

* Consumption of flour has gone down at such an amazing rate that four large flour mills in the suburbs belonging to the big and financially powerful Schoeller concern have closed, and bakers are everywhere going bankrupt.

What is the reason ? Herr Artur Grimm, head of one of the biggest of Vienna’s bakeries and editor of. the bakers’ organ, casts most of the blame for this serious situation on “Frau Mode.”

She has decreed “the straight line” iu dress, and that necessitates what the fair sex of Vienna terms “English slimness.” And the way to achieve “English slimness” is o eat little or no bread, and ot “swear off” dainty cakes and pastries, of which Vienna is passionately fond. “Now,” Herr Grimm says, “there must be at 'least 200,000 women in the city who are achieving or preserving ‘the straight line’ figures by avoiding bread, and particularly pastry. When Frau Mode was not so strict, when fashion and food were not such close allies, each of these would certainly consume, and enjoy, three pastries a day. “Their self-denial means, therefore, that 600,000 fewer pastries per, day are required ! “In Vienna we have 600 bakeries, so that, on the average, each is now turning out 1000 fewer pastries every morning.

“Reckon them at 2£d each and you will find that we are sustaining a loss of nearly £45,000 a week—in pastries alone! Add the reduced bread consumption to this and the figure must be nearly £lOO,OOO, or more than £5,000,000 a year!” “That’s ‘the straight line’ to bankruptcy,” laments Herr Grimm, “and it’s a lot to pay so that the ladies may be able to get into fashion’s latest models.”