Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 143, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1918 — FADS “OVER THERE” [ARTICLE]

FADS “OVER THERE”

Reviving Skirt With Ankle Slit— The Sugar Chatelaine. Tiny Case Is Used to Carry the Very Scarce Sweet—Tin Helmets With Brims.of Straw. The wool shortage works out differently in London and New York apparently, for word comes recently that English women are reviving the skirt with an ankle slit. Skirts must of necessity be of scanty dimensions, and one simply vannot wear a skirt that is only a yard and a half wide and hope to walk with ease. Hence the slit, states a fashion correspondent. Five years ago the slit skirt was undoubtedly merely a freak of fashion. We didn’t have to wear such narrow skirts. But now, apparently, it has come back in London as a matter of necessity, if not of actual patriotism. Here, of course, we manage, as we think, more cleverly. We combine wool with silk and other fabrics in a way that makes it possible to have the minimum of wool in our frocks, without a skirt so narrow as to make the slit inevitable. During the sugar shortage last winter there were some hostesses who added a line bearing the words “Please bring your own sugar” to their cards sent out to invite friends to afternoon tea. At least one woman, who was particularly frank, resorted to this device when her own sugar supply had been reduced to zero. But that is so long ago, and so remote now is any actual famine in sugar, that we have forgotten all about It. It seems now as if ■wheat was the only thing that we had ever had to conserve. However, in France, and to a certain extent in England, sugar is still a scarce article. In parts of France there simply isn’t any. It isn’t a question of conservation there, for how can you conserve that of which you have positively none? When there is any sugar it is prized as were costly spices from the Indies prized in the days when to seek a short route to such prizes was sufiicient incentive to make Christopher Columbus brave the unknown seas. French people never knew how much they liked sweets until now. And among the most recently produced “vanity” accessories for the fashionable woman’s chatelaine is a tiny sugar case. It is carried to tea parties. Presumably, the woman fortunate enough to have a supply of sugar profits thereby and drops it into her own tea, while those about her go without Or perhaps she takes the sugar box with her so that she may share her good fortune with those with whom she drinks tea. Just why the women of England should feel constrained to wear tin hats it is hard to see. Surely there is no demand for straw in war work? So in using tin they are not effecting any sort of conservation. These helmets are made in all sorts of colors, and, strange to say, are extremely light—really lighter than the average crown made of straw’. The tin helmet is combined with a brim of straw or fabric, to make hats of various shapes and sizes.