The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-07-25

By GRETTA PALMER

EASHIONS Cnange. fHShlOnS
Il in hats and neighborhoods, in
architecture and literature and
women. 1t Is the tragedy of many
a modern girl that she was not
born in the period when size 2
shoes we're mark OF signal
beauty.
Others long for the days of the
Seven Sutherland Sisters, when
their trailing hair would have
been called browning glory and
not consigned to the hairdressers'
wastebasket. Each age brings
forth It's type, to which all
women must try to conform their
Municipalities, and each age
seems to bring forth, too, some
single figure who appeals to the
public imagination as its femi-
nine ideal.
One might learn a great deal
about period by studying the
woman whose name it invariably
suggests.
We suspect that the sultry,
subtle charms of Cleopatra could
have appealed only to the people
OF an empire into which the seeds
of corruption had already been
sown.
We doubt whether the lofty,
intellectual appeal of Aspasia
would have not been lost on a
civilization less devoted to auster-
ity of thought than the Greece
Of her day.
THE last forty years in this
Il country have been packed
with incident and with dramatic,
topsy- turvy changes of front, and
historians may some day distin-
guish between the various periods
through which we have passed SO
swiftly as the age of the Gibson
Girl and the Gloria Swanson per-
iod, just as they spsak of the time
OF Charles 1 or Louis XVI.
Modern presidents have little
power to affect the everyday tenn
per Of the American people, but
our current national heroines may
transform the personality of
three-quarters Of the women of
the country.
Some day one of these histor-
ians bold enough to study things
more frivolous than treaties and
battles will ponder on the remark
able change which has come over
our national ideal in the few years
which separate Lillian Russell and
Greta Carlo, and he will realize
that either of the types moved to
the wrong decade might have been
considered downright homely.
Lillian Russell flourished in a
conservative, conventional age
when we are told the opinions of
their elders were held in high re-
spect by the young.
1t is in such times that men
grow boards, in an effort in such
sedate and elderly decades that
a mature figure and corseted con-
tours are held in high esteem.
This American love of amplitude
seems to have persisted through
the reign of Anna Held. But in
the early years of the century a
new and adventurous spirit was
abroad in the land.
We began tentatively to en-
courage a cult of youth, which is
still in sway today, and, of course,
we needed youthful heroine.
GO Gaby Deslys came along to
~ catch the public fancy with
her long, slim figure of a young
girl. Although she was succeeded
by Theda Bara, there was a
change in the public's attitude
toward the lush type Of heroine.
Theda Bara was recognized as
very special type of the YAM
pire. Her glamour was recognized
as somewhat poisonous, her curves
were regarded as a candid con-
teSSlon that she meant no good.
The day of slender national hero
ines already had dawned.
Mrs. Vernon Castle seized the
public fancy and made chic and
good dancing obligatory upon any
girl who wished to keep up with
the times. Elaborate dressing,
plucked eyebrows and an air of
weary hauteur were ushered in
by the Marquise de la Falaise,
Gloria Swanson.
The high spirits and hair-pull-
ing romps of the postwar years
gave us Clara Bow And when
skirt lengths went down and lady
like hats came in it was inevitable
that we should have new and
more subtle type of feminine ia
tale. Hence the wistful and elu-
sive Greta Carlo.
Some day a historian will turn
his thoughts to the long-neglected
subject of women. Then, and
only then, shall we fully under
stand the relationship between the
rage for blondes and the Repub-
lican administration, the boyish
bob and the bull market, the de-
wand fo,. l0,ocy aUa1o cl7aS opd tho