Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 162, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1918 — Pay Little Heed to War Clothes [ARTICLE]

Pay Little Heed to War Clothes

> New York.—The radicals are at It again. They are agitating for the standardization of women’s dress as a war measure of equal importance with the conservation of .food. Rumors of frocks all alike, cut by the millions and placed on the market for the colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady, so that they may become sisters In their attire as well as under their skins, .comments a fashion authority, reach us from time to time through the sections of the dally press devoted to women’s affairs. Sometimes the arguments are quite learned. The French revolution is freely quoted as being the event finally responsible for the standardization of men’s dress. To be sure, one of the first things that Napoleon did, when he reached the position of being able to set the fashion, was to make men’s clothes as gorgeous and as complex as they had been before the abolition of the Bourbons. But the effect did not last long. “Sans culottism” had taken too firm a hold on men’s affections. They soon went back to that dignified but ugly garment, the long trousers, and they have remained faithful to them ever since. , Students of the history of costume cite this as an example, and tell us—some hopefully, some regretfully—that the present Armageddon will do the same for women. But then come oth■ers —students, too, but students of the

human nature back of the clothes, rather than of the clothes themselves —and they giv§ an emphatic No! to the whole proposition. t-' “The standardization ,of women’s dress has gone as far-now as It ever will," Is their cbntention. Easy to Get Into. Very busy women —and what other kind is there at present—may make insistent demands for clothes that are easy to get into. “Easily adjusted, madam,", will sell more gowns this season than the catch phrase, “This is what they’re wearing." Coats and suits and one-piece dresses will maintain their popularity; “shirtwaists” Ghat launder like a man’s shirt will refuse to be ousted. But there will always be more variety in women’s dress than there is in men’s, and women as a whole will continue to be more preoccupied with the question of wherewithal they shall be clothed. One reason for the continuance of variety in feminine attire, in spite of wars and rumors of wars, is the fact that women as a whole are rested by a change of occupation. So the business woman, on her return from her office, is quite willing to sit down to stocking darning, so that she may continue to wear the thread-bare hose in which her heart delights; she sits up late to run ribbons in her lingerie; she will wash out and iron her own neckwear in order that she may make her serge suit or frock more becoming by softening lt with frills at the throat Did anyone ever hear of the man who Washed his own collars? He will polish his own shoes—-tradition says that he will perform this operation more

willingly and of tener than any woman; he will brush his clothes —but there his sartorial measures of preparedness end. So heis naturally restricted to a form of garment which is easily kept in order. Man's Insensibility to Temperature. Another reason is the average man’s absolute insensibility to changes in temperature—at least,, from the woman’s point of view. He declares that there is a vast difference in warmth between his winter-weight blue serge and his summer weight, but no woman can see It To her he is a mystery as he goes to his office on a boiling August morning, clad completely in wool, with a high-starched collar round his neck and thick leather shoes on his feet Just as great a mystery is she to him in winter, with her georgette sleeves, thin stockings and paper-soled pumps. Probably it is six of one and half a dozen of the other. But there is an army of women who go clothed in cotton and linen from May to October; who will pay extravagant laundry bills if they live in the city; who will travel with an electric Iron in their trunks when they visit the country; who will pay almost any price in time, money and convenience for the privilege of wearing thin clothes throughout the dog days. There is a great army of them who still, in spite of war work, make their own summer frocks, by the aid of a

tissue paper pattern. There is another even, larger group who solve six months’ dressmaking problems by buying ginghams and muslins and hiring the services of a dressmaker “by the day.” Are all these women going to be bound down by standardization? Of course not Summer Fabrics Fascinating. Besides the feminine failing of buying a thing, not because one needs it, but because it is cheap, to which the makers of summer fabrics have always catered, there is the eternal fascination of the materials themselves—their sympathetic surfaces, their freshness, their delicious color. This year we are more discreet Brilliant tones are still to be seen, but the general feeling is one of moderation in all things, even in color. Fabrics, too, are discreet Very popular are net, foulard and organdie. One may be gay in foulard, it is true, but one is more apt to be navy blue or black dr gray in it Organdie is subtle in its color range, not striking, and the <sbthes that -we construct of it haveatmosphere of “old-tlmey-ness" far removed from anything so smashing, dashing, as the Russian ballet color combinations. In less expensive fabrics, which are among the few things that remain within the reach of the woman of modest budget, there are the printed voiles, the ever-popu-lar ginghams, and the season’s revival, calico, or percale, to give it the name under which it is sold in most places. (Copyright, 1918, by th* McClure Newspaper