Paris, April 16, Not only has the woman of fashion of 1930 no knees, but shis has hardly any ankles. She may show her ankles a trifle in her afternoon tea-gown, but only a This return to the fashion of the modern young woman's grandmother is definitely established and the gown creators of the Rue de la Paix declare they should not be surprised if men are deprived of seeing women's knees, as they have been accustomed to, for perhaps the next two years, So far as shapely limbs are concerned, in fact, women of to-day might as well go back to the crinolines of Victorian times and certainly Miss 1930 is as averse from showing her calves, apart from dimpled knees, as the woman of 1830, But whereas the latter lady was inspired solely by modesty, the ini of to-day has no concern about sparing her own blushes and is simply following the inexorable rulings of the fashion fiends.
According to Captain Edward Molyneux, the English dress design ex here who is probably the first foreigner ever to clothe the French aristocracy, women are glad to have chance of covering up their legs for a time. If anything, they are Tikely to be more and more modest only to enjoy the contrast with the prolonged period of leg display, when shimmering silk stockings served to attract male attention much as an elegant gown, 'Now the dress designer as coming into his own again, with creations of subtle slowing' lines, making every women appear like'a grownup doll. Just now, evening dresses alone trail right down to the toes and heels, but the Rue de La Paix believes day dresses will soon enough follow along the same long. lines. Thus street scenes in Paris, New York and London, wherever there are fashionable woman, will shortly resemble the crinoline age and men will have to take care of their feet if they don't want to trip a lady's gown, The new flowing evening dresses are already causing confusion on the dance floors. of the Paris cabarets and select night haunts where women have not yet learned the way to recapture the art of comporting themselves in long. dresses, The dress designers say women need to practice the art of deportment thoroughly before they can wear the new gowns with the ease and grace of the Indies of the crinoline, "For this reason, the schools of department, which died when the skimpy dress came into the kingdom under the flapper regime, are springing up again in order that madam may learn how to swing her skirts and, on the dance floor, save her gown and her partner from disaster.—United Pres: fortunately not white any colour does. If it's an Antibes skin of the Zula, summer kind, the only things in clothes that matter are those in which to tan, No man is interested in a lyon woman from the moment the sun goes down, and no woman looks so ridiculous in an evening frock as one who has toasted her skin, Women must be something more than women who, painfully transformed into natives, with vivid lips and no stockings and very white of eye, can hold a man's attention in the evening at Antibes, or at the Lido or, for matter of that, at any place with water where there has been sun. She has made herself a freak.
If women dressed for men there would be a change in jewelry. They would be required to wear at the very most only one nice thing. Away would go all blatant, pear! nymphs, and" the length of the frock, for day and night, would then be regulated by the beauty of the knee. And thus would the world be spared from many dreadful shocks. Under these emancipated and pleasant conditions elderly ladies would be enabled to men's indescribable relief, to bring back dignity into this careless age. Our mothers and grandmothers would de-flapperise themselves, become graceful and human once more and regain the old respect which they have utterly lost. How good to see the gigolo creep back to his former haunt, And with the disappearance of that most poisonous thing there would also all the forced gaiety and meaningless laughter, spine-erinkling coyness and painful coquettishness which drives young men from home. The hugging space of the night clubs would offer much more room. wives of half-wits, the sons of certain peers and ingenious bu: ness men would vulgarity remain. There would be a change in makeup, too. Eyebrows would longer plucked. Rouge would di appear. The lip-stick would considerably toned down and untransferable, and the nose would come.to life again whether it shone or not. Nothing annoys a. man more than a dead white nose, and nothing is so outrageous to him as the process, especially in public of putting it'under a pall. Red nails would certainly go. Perfume strict moderation would, of course, remain. There are memories in perfume and moments of sentiment.
The first revolution in day clothes would be in the matter of shoes.
The ugly and abominable high heel would disappear at once—from the house, from the street, from the lawn.' The fatuous way of holding buttonless coat hauled geograpically tight would cease immediately.
its would come in for inspection, and the jammed-on, car-covering, robotlike thing, so trying to every face, especially' when worn, American' flapper fashion, leaving the forehead bald, would never be seen again. Brims would have to come back. There is nothing much else to alter in day clothes otherwise except that the shoulders of tailor-made coats should be squared. The sloping shoulder in mannish things looks comic to a degree.
If women dressed for men, theb—though they never will—there would be far less of that slavish standardization than there is today. Unafraid of other women's eyes, women would be free to wea what suits them and not what is "the thing." No longer should we see little women wearing the clothes in which only tall women look well, and tall women endeavouring to carry the clothes which are becoming to little ones. No longer should we suffer from the sight of the Juno type squeezed into garments designed for constant All this goes to prove that if women dressed for men there would be no man living to-day who could quote the cruel words of Beaumont and Fletcher's husband to his wife:
"T warrant thy clothes are all the soul thou hast." The enger competition of woman against woman and its fantastic extravagance would cease, Sanity would return with simplicity and much more happiness. Men could afford marry again: they certainly can't to-day. What little is left to most men after paying income tax and the deadly monotonous instalments on the wholly superfluous car cannot, as things are, cope with the merciless demands' of women who enter the inter feminine competition for piling up dressmakers' bills.
Personally, 1 cannot see why a woman should spend more money on her back than a man does on his in this age of equality, or what she has ever done to imagine why she should.
"Dress drains our cellar dry, And heepa our larder lean; pats out ana tnerodtces unger, frost and Where peace and hospitality might reign.
Cosmo Hammon,' in "Britannia."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.