The Daily Alaska empire., 1938-07-20
By ADELAIDE KERR
Heaven only knows!

t1tdVel OllIy kllUWS!
 Skirt lengths, like other fashion whims, depend on such things as what's going on in the world the psychology and manners of the mo- ment and designers desire to stimu- late interest in fashions by chang ing them.
 Hard times and foreign wars seem to have little to do with the ques- ton. The short skirt has been with us both in boom times and in slumps.
 The World War, in which women played part, is credited Cor dis credited, with having had great influence in starting hemlines on the rise that brought the knee length skirt
 It Seems There Was a War
 In 1914 skirts were about ankle length, figures were sternly corset ed and the skirt and blouse idea was the favorite dress theme. And then women went to war and were never the same again. They gained new freedom that set it's stamp on their clothes as well as their minds. The work they did in hospital and canteen was hard Anything which hampered it was pruned away.
 Long hair was cut, confining cor sets limbered or eliminated alto- gether and skirts which swept up debris were shortened
 The Armistiee was signed and wo- men came home with preference for short locks, short frocks and one-piece dresses that didn't part company in the middle.
 Then came suffrage, which was, probably, psychological factor in influencing women to accept the freedom of the shorter skirt
 Designers hopped on the band wagon, showed shorter skirts in their collections and before long they became the rule.
 The show was on!
 During the twenties, skirts short ened until Fifth Avenue and every other civilized" thoroughfare be- came sea of pink -stockinged legs knock -kneed and otherwise. Men, who had cheered the first raising of the curtain, began to find the pa geant palling. They muttered in of fices and in their wives ears. Col umnists, cartoonists and parsons preached. They might as we'll have saved their breath.
 Whatever Goes Up-
 Women went serenely on, snip ping an inch or two off their skirts each year. Some did it because they had beautiful legs, others because they always follow fashion, others just because.
 When it came to the point where women could scarcely sit down in their skirts, something had to be done Patou did it. He dropped the hemlines one hot August day in 1929. The reverberation could be heard around the world ~
 Staid clubwomen, who decade before would have gasped with hor- TOT at the idea of wearing a knee length skirt, now led mass-meetings in which women speakers protested that women would "never go back to the slavery of skirts which swept up the dirt in the street"
 tMen took no part in this act of the show. They merely looked on from the side lines-undecided whether to be sorry or relieved.)
 When the smoke had cleared away in 1930, skirts were found to be instep or ,floor-length in the eve ming and six to nine inches from the street by day.
 The show was over!
 You Can See For Yourself
 Now. after an interlude of com paratiye- peace, it threatens to begin again. Ask almost any woman to- day if she would return to the knee length skirt and she will reply with horror, "Never!'
 But look at the hemline of the skirt she is wearing and see how few inches it already lacks of touch ing her knee.
 HELD ON LARCENY COrrNT