The Washington times., 1937-10-04
,.
Says
BOake Carter
Husbands and Clothes.
For Whom Do Women Dress?
Personality Ignored.

SASSAh4ASy AS AOA Gu
Paris-The Duke Of Windsor ducked
all responsibility for his wife's choice
OF hats and gowns today by playing
golf while she shopped.
All, yes, but the next days
dispatch revealed that he didn't
duck responsibility after all, for
the Duchess had all the hats
and gowns she chose sent home
for him to consider in private.
WE in America snicker at the
w manner in which conti-
mental men Of Europe interest
themselves in the clothes their
women wear, but if we men
snickered less and developed
some Of the same habits, United
States women might dress more
as individualists with clothes
befitting their individual per-
sonalities. their ages and the
eras to which they belong, in
stead of appearing as though
they had all been ground out
of the end Of a mass-produc-
ton machine.
United States women spend
more money and time on their
clothes than the women of any
other country in the world
and I have lived in thirteen ma
tions-yet if you cut off the
heads of 80 per cent of the
women you see on the average
main stem of the average city
of the country and stood their
bodies up in a row you'd be
almost willing to bet their
clothes came out Of sne same
mold.
And American men are mostly
to blame. First, the American
man has never learned the art
Of leisure like the European
male. Second, he's always been
too busy trying to make money
to find time to bother even
about his own clothes, let alone
interesting himself in what his
women wear.
What has happened? United
States women, left to buy their
hats and their dresses, their
coats and their shoes on their
own responsibility. shop with an
eye to pleasing not their men
but other women.
0TYLISTS omplain that
~ United States women hustle
into a shop, see a dress upon a
model and instantly demand it
for themselves, not on the basis
Of whether it fits their person
ality or their figure, but because
it looks swell on the model. It's
the dress that appeals to them.
not the far more important fact
of whether that dress looks well
on them.
Short women, fat women,
Stumpy women You see day after
day chugging along bravely in
some closely-Wrapped or slinky
gown which can look well only
on a slim-figured girl. What of
the present feminine fashion,
wide, square shoulders? It's the
fashion-the popular thing for
the moment-and so, while the
slim girls get away with it,
stumpy girls look like miniature
tanks, with their shoulders all
out of proportion to the length
of their bodies.
Few American men have the
nerve to tell their women that
they are funny looking in this
or that get-up, for, poor souls,
they'll live to regret it-and
how! Yet United States women
surely make a big mistake in not
encouraging their men folk to
be honest, frank and interested.
for the men are the ones they
should please first and foremost.
60 many women are filled with
~ personality. yet it is dulled
and blunted by their slavery to
maSs-fashion manias. Every
woman in the world has her
own personality, peculiar unto
herself. The male of the species
is her game.
If she tried to find clothes
that fitted that Individuality
instead Of clapping some ludi-
crouS bonnet with a yard Of
ribbon hanging down the back
and the front end cooked over
one eye Just because everybody
a., Ias,