Dress and Morals.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 6, 10 August 1910, Page 61

Dress and Morals.

FASHIONS OF TO-DAY IN LONDON. WHITE FOR MIDDLE-AGE. (From Our Lady Coi respondent.) LON DOX, June 24. Men journalists have for some time past made scornful copy out of the fashionable toddle skirts, and an epigram in a weekly of this week sums up the opinion, at least, of one of them. •’Our womenfolk,” it says, ‘‘are copying their fashions from the demi-monde.

As their skirts get tighter their morate get looser.” It is a remarkable thing for one who professes loyalty to her sex to admit, perhaps; but 1 think those women who blindly follow this fashion conic perilously near that thin line over which no woman of gentle instincts may ever step. Make a mental picture of the really up-to-date London woman of to-dav. She wears a large hat—there are large hats and large hats, and there are some women who. it should be remembered, can never wear the “ami large ones.” Now. there’s a girl in London that I know who pins on a hat jauntily, till her eyes are just visible beneath its huge brim, her hair entirely hidden, and 1 watched her the other day. wondering why a chilly little feeling was playing hide-and-seek down my back. Then she pirom tied about in front of a glass ami said saucily, drawing on long gloves. “You know, a man told me to-day that this hat is positively immoral. Absurd idea!” Nothing of the kind—the man was right, and in one wax that girl would have been infinitely less indecent if she’d walked down the Strand in a gymnastic costume. In a fashionable dress—a skirt tight from the knees down, so that a half-blind passer-by would know that no petticoat, even of the thinnest material. would have space to exist -.a Magyar blouse, transparent half way to the waist, show ing through it a delicately be ribboned lace camisole—it is not hard, for even a person who takes no interest in fashions, to sec that little respect is likely to bo accorded the woman, so attired, by men. It will be thought that 1 am a preaching, straight la<ed. undated, neglected female to write on; but. indeed, I am not; but a woman with a great love and admiration for my own sex and its witcheries. But I have got eyes in my head, and there’s something particularly revolting in seeing. and being compelled to hear the remarks, as one may any day in a quiet street, of a group of idle men who turn and stare after a xvoman dressed in the latest fashion. A deal of reproof could be laid at the door of the dressmakers who turn these devotees of dress out. and who flatter their customers into buying “the very latest.” But. after all. every woman has a mind of her own in most matters, and why not also in dress is a my-tery. SUM MER TR AN S F() 11 MAT lON S. London is doing itself proud in the matter of weather, and glorious sunshine has prevailed now for some weeks, with the result that pretty frocks and hats, parasols, gloves, and all the dainty accessories of the well dressed woman are making the great city bright. One needs, I think, to l»e in a densely populated centre to notice what a great difference the advent of summer—a sunshiny. genial summer —makes. To see not only one. or a hundred, but thousands of straw’ Ijoaters suddenly donned by men who a few weeks ago wore the same com monplace, unspeak:*; ! y hideous bowlers as every other man. or the same absurd top-hats, brings home the realisation of summer as we hardly have an opportunity of noting it in New Zealand. Women’s clothes seem to alter mon* gradually, though. undoubtedly, the average middle c lass Englishwoman that one meets of a winter’s morning, if it be wet, generally wears a gown as dismal as the weather, and in the summer looks fresh and bright. But it is not with the* badly turned out woman that my readers or myself have to do. Furs give* way to chiffon rutiles, and these to transparen cies; hats, dark in winter, become gradii ally lighter and more festive; dresses, too, alter by degrees. So it is that summer seems to burst out in England. Just now. of course*, sulxlued tones arc displayed perforce, and costumes of heliotrope, pale grey, <>t black and white only, save for foreigners, whose toilettes give the one touch of “outside” colouring that is s«*en. The Englishwoman in black is, however. I think, only surpassed by the English woman in white, and very graceful and charming does she look in this sunshiny weather with her upright carriage* and beautiful complexion—when the latter it her own! White, that makes a young, natural woman younger and daintier than ever, is a pitiless revealer of defects in her “made up” sister. The starched white frock and the lingerie gown are for the girl, or for a genuinely youthful middle-aged woman: but it is g. n< rally wiser, when one is not young, to wear softer white fabrics, such as ercpis or crepons, that will lie in graceful folds and give no appearance of simulate*’ youth.