New-York tribune., 1918-02-17

Of the critics of women's apparel that fashions
are not as fiighty as they seem. The weather
vane turns, 1T is true, but it swirls back into
the same quarter so frequently that at times
there is a feeling that it changes little.
The American shops. it is claimed, constant
ly convince their patrons that an old gown
must be replaced by new one by showing a
revolution in silhouette.
Novelty the
First Demand
The first claim to fortune in this country is
novelty. 1t may be that we indulge in far
more of it when it comes to women's clothes
than the French designers do One thing is
true of trade in this country. 1t is conducted
on much vaster scale, and it goes through
deeper and more uproarious channels than the
French trade in women's apparel.
We inundate a country with certain style
through the aid of parcel post, pattern books,
chain of stores and travelling statesmen; the
waters then quickly recede and another inun-
datlon is due Therefore, another style is sent
out over the continent in a series of waves.
We have millions Of women to dress, where
France has thousands and we have popula-
tion that is quite capable of indulging in its
desire for clothes from the rim of the
Arctic Circle to line above the tropics.
1t is we'll known fact that the American
buyers who go to Paris to get clothes
often refuse lovely gowns if they bear a close
klnship to those that they were sold the year
before. They wave such frocks away with
the remark that American women must have
novelty.
This act has always depressed the designers
in Paris, who care for beauty and detail rather
than for startling change, and it is the French
designers who say that they rack their brains
for eccentricities to give to America far more
than they would if their clientele were only
Rome, Paris and London.
1t is this underlying trait in the French
dressmakers that gives them the desire to per-
sist in a certain line-which is coming back to
the original discussion.
Now the
Zouave Skirt
This line happens to be, at the present mo-
ment, that tucked-in effect at the hem OF the
skirt, which is suggestive of the trousers of the
Algerian troops.
Nobody would remember, probably, the cx,
act date of the beginning of this idea, but it
was evolved long before the war. 1t has been
brought out in various kinds of skirts.
The house of Callot was probably the first
to bring out the idea in narrow skirt, but IT.
did not take. Poret, who has devotional at
titude toward anything that comes out of the
East, used this skirt throughout his years Of
success.
Cheruit adopted it in modified manner half
a dozen years ago. Jenny took it up about
two winters ago and accentuated it in her pop
ular costumes in such manner that America
grew more weary of it through this channel
than any other. Somehow, as Jenny made it.
it did not SAVIOR of the East. 1t was merely
awkward and extremely grlish.
Last autumn the immense bulk of the Amer
lean public looked with shrug of the should
ders at the pink and blue taffeta skirts that
were tucked up at the hem and caught here
and there with formal little bouquet of roses.
How stale and stupid Paris is! was the CON-
ment. Can't she get into her head that
America does not want that loose, overfull
SKIRT with It's ungraceful line about the ankles?
Debutantes and young girls continued to dance
IN this kind of skirt wherever the fiddcs
sounded, but women of more mature years dis
missed it as a fashion from the start.
The Trousered Skirt
Refuses to Be Ignored
Now, it is here again, not only here, but
lrnrt AL