It is the "nothing to wear" season. "Too cool for summer clothes, and besides everybody's tire ed of wearing them anyway; too warm to venture into furs and the new autumn creations, and too soon fof any woman finally to have decided on what she is going to wear for the next few months.
The shops are doing their best to help; their windows are full of, odd shaped sleeves, unusual colourings and jazzy little scarves and hats. Mme, Garnett I hear, is having her usual collection of autumn models very shortly. Next week it takes place, but as the invitation says "Strictly Personal", I suppose only the chosen few will attend.
Men out here seem to take very little interest in clothes—their own, mean. Fashions are not important to them until-they go on leave and have out of sheer self-respect to rush to their tailor the moment they set foot in London.
However, wives don't all show this lack of interest and I hear from London that "Men are not to be outdone and are to have a dress salon of their own. It is to be opened in a few weeks' time in a fashionable part of the West End, and a cockt#il bar will be permanently installed, Several of the best-known young men about town have offered to wear the new clothes and accessories at the dress shows which will take place twice a'week. The new venture is the idea of Peter Russell, the dressmaker of Bruton-street W., who says that men are not always properly catered for by their tailors. "I want to: introduce new materials for sports, for one thing," he said.
"And I am convinced that the. holiday cruises need a_ special outfit which aman cannot get at an ordinary tailor's." Mr. Russell said: "I am making my. dressing-gowns with cravats. How many wives have finally decided on divorce after being confronted time after time at breakfast bythe sight of a husband's bare throat above a dress sing gown?" A new colour is to be introduced for dinner jackets and tail-coats. This is a dark prune. A dinner jacket, to wear at home is made of prune velvet with a watered-silk waistcoat to match."
The Nudist' Movement It seems that the Nudist movement is creating quite a sensation in Hongkong. - It is at any rate in existence in actual fact, for a local newspaper speaks of "Naked bathing in River" and members basking in the sun and swimming without a stitch of clothing on.
The Society has, I hear, already a membership of over forty which includes men and women of various nationalities—some of them British. The names of the members are still being kept rather quiet but it is said that the society owes its existence to Mr. Herbert E. Lanpart (who believes in the beneficial effects of the sun on the body, my dear) and it was he who was responsible for its organised outings.
The nudists have already made several excursions to a secluded spot just outside Hongkong, and spend thaiss time swimming and sun bathing. So far, officialdom has not exactly forbidden their innocent pastime, but the Government has definitely refused any grant of land to the society.
Well, well, I suppose Governments have not much spare time to worry about the rights of nudists. And, what With the new autumn fashions and winter coming on—neither have we.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.