SLAVES OF FASHION.

New Zealand Tablet, 5 February 1920, Page 45

SLAVES OF FASHION.

Mrs. Mary Maher, in a paper on "St. Brigid and Her Teaching to the Women of Ireland," at the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland Conference in Dublin, sketched the life and work of St. Brigid and her associations with St. Patrick. Dealing with her teachings, she' said St. Brigid taught the mothers of Erin what purity of life should be, and how the practice of Christian modesty was essential to its preservation. "Are the women of Erin of tho twentieth century living up to the high standard of St. Brigid's teaching?" sho asked. A great many were doing so, but they would do much better work if the spirit of mutual charity, kindness, and sympathy were more in practice. People were too much given to criticise and condemn —few to help. Damo Fashion ruled her slaves with an iron rod, her everchanging whims followed with the most slavish obedience, and when those whims offended against Christian laws-, these poor slaves were too cowardly to rise against them. They tried to deaden the under-force of conscience with the flippant remark: "You might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion." The constant whirl of change so blindly followed by fashion's votaries was the greatest enemy of legitimate trade, leaving as its results unsold goods in large quantities on traders' hands, and, too often, unpaid bills, for the blind votaries of fashion would rather risk debt than risk the danger of being pronounced out of tho fashion. Tracing tho evolution of the fashions, Mrs. Maher said it was France, in order to increase her exports, that conceived the idea of employing designers of artistic and refined taste to design court fashions. For the last halfcentury France has been ruled by infidels, who wanted to drive Christianity from the country. Could those evilhearted men have more able abettors than designors whose aim would bo to induce women to cast aside all respect for Christian society and adopt fashions both vulgar and immodest? Irish mothers should give no place in their homes to fashion magazines ,-replete with immodest advertisements and with silly, frivolous advice.