Please wait. Contacting image service... loading

Article text

a ? 'd k. n ' n i/-^
[?]
THEY'RE almost immune to
caprices of fashion be
cause of their deeproot
ed dress conservatism but,
take it from me, men are go
ing to accept the New Look.
No man who has passed the
loud - tie - for - loudness' sake
stage probably likes to hear his
war-revolutionised garb label
led so effeminately; but the
point is that while so many
women are putting on non
sense, men are at least head
ing for sense.
The young holiday man
trom-town you re seeing over Easter
is not a true example; take instead
your smart young salesman-about-town
m nis snort-sleeved jacket with open neck, his light
trousers or shorts to match and his light-weight
panama hat.
Either personally or in effect he has a background
of desert marches and New Guinea heat, where there
was a longing for cool,, clean, neat clothes. He or
his fellows wore modified service clothing while they
waited for tailors to produce that suit; they waited
and waited, and then found solution to delay and
hefty prices and summer discomfort in the various
forms of the New Look in men's clothes.
'THIS acceptance of the New Look for men by
men is dictated not by fashionconscious
ness, but by considerations of time, materials,
labour and cost — just like any other industrial
matter.
There are no less tailors, and the
tailor's business is booming now. But
the tailor can't turn out suits fast
enough; he is frantic for materials and
labour.
Young people won't settle down and
go back to a five-year apprenticeship
so that they can learn to be coat
hands, or a three-year apprenticeship
to learn to be coat and vest
hands. A tailored suit isn't
made, it's built. It involves
hundreds of processes, and
none of them is worth it when
the coat frays at the cuffs and
the trousers shine on the seat
long before you can have a
new one.
In the last couple of years, nimble
fingered wives have made husbands'
pyjamas, shirts, safari jackets and
even pants. Men are beginning to realise that it
is not only extremely bad manners to insult
women with- 'cissy' references, but rather silly
when earlier reforms in women's dress are inspir
ing many conservative changes in their own.
Men are studying clothes and talking about them
and doing more about them these days. Many
of them are even spending more on dress than the
average woman.
The average man must pay at least twice as much
for a tailored suit as he paid in prewar days —
with very little guarantee that the suit would last
as long as the prewar suit.
Having, in service days, acquired the habit of
dressing for the weather, he now definitely requires
both winter and summer suits.
All because they've not only got the New Look
but — what started it all — the New Outlook.
none Help
none Help
$