Design in dress both in England and in the United States, is standing still and not only because of the war. The falling out of French design is revealing immense gaps which the "United States attempts to fill by turning to periods. England is carrying on as before with, here and there, attempts at original design showing promise of better things. The design of the children's dresses promoted by the Cotton Board for export purposes cauld not have been bettered; some sports clothes—tweeds, knitted goods, and business-silks—also show merit, Otherwise, both England and the United States have looked largely to France for design and, curiously enough, have been rather proud of their dependence, Shortage of materials and dependence on its own ideas might be used as a considerable stimulus to British dress design.
It might thereby become as sure of its women's clothes as of its men's and children's. Compared with some nations, Britain is lazy-minded, preferring not to think where such things as design are i volved. The Briton is rather like the woman who said of her doctor that he was no good at diagnosis but excellent at treatment, That is to say, the idea behind the thing is considered of less account than the thing which could exist without it, Design is not cutting out and making up, It is sitting down and thinking; it is observing and catching out of the air that which is floating formlessly by until it is so caught.
Deprived of its French crutch, English design might well be compelled to walk alone—even to run ahead and use its manifest advantages. Desiza applies just as much to dress as to grander projects, such, for instance, as archifecture.' The French, men and women, have always taken dress seriously, The English really only take men's dress seriously, If women's dress were taken as seriously, if it were not, at bottom, considered a trifle frivolous, a trifle derogatory to nobility of character, it would improve vastly.
Design, whether for building cathedrals or for promoting a new suit, requires the best talents. It can be supplemented by good tailoring; it can be enormously enhanced by beauty of materials—indeed, materials may almost be the design, Short of this very best, English design will not only fail to capture foreign markets; it will fail to exist, This period, which in default of stuffs, in default of labour, in default' of everything which makes things easy, instead of being a magnificent opportunity for the thought from which everything springs, may land us in one dullness after another until, at the end, we are again compelled to look elsewhere for what we want, Cool Drinks for Summer
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.