Having instituted passive resistance against styles dened for slim young things of feom eighteen to twenty-two, middle-aged and stout women have not fought any new dresses for the last six, months, according to Mme. Helene Volka, stylist for the New York State Federation of Women's Clubs, who spoke recently at a conference at the Astor under the a pices of the Garment Retailers Americ The trouble started last August, she said, when the fad for Grecian figures and long, supple lines swept, into the United' States from Paria The narrow belt, worn waist high, was the principal offender, she said, because it only could be worn with effect by the stender.
"Retailers placed overemphasis ow tirls from eighteen. to twenty-two and ignored the middle-aged won tan, the woman who is important in the cultural and financial world; they overlooked the woman who is the [purchaser for the family. They either had nothing now to offer het, or else they tried to sell her drosses' design ed for young women, remade in larger. size. But, middle-aged women do not want to have their daughters' clothes made over for them. It is a false assumption that women over forty-five want to made young by ypune clothes."
Mme. Volka asked that clder we: men be allowed to have—dresses which were becoming to them. was only on this condition, she said that the 400,000 club women she represented would cease their boycott on retail stores. Older women, she said, rather would continus the wear ther old dresses than appear in enlarged versions of thole daughters' gowns.
'One trouble, she telioved, was that retailers' had begun to thine that stout models defaced their they were afraid that the daughters would keep away from the shops where their mothers were This idea, she charactes-s Rose Glenby, of the aterchandise and Research Bureau, add-fed that present styles wore design ed for women who were taller than the average. Sixty per cent. of women are under five fect five inches in height and set most rosen are bought for women of five feet six oF' seven, she pointed out, la urging retailers to take statistics into account in stocking their dreas-
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