These New Fashions

Ah, how sweet is rest after toil...

The well-known tailor Elias Khoury sat down, then opened by asking me: What does The Woman's Voice want?

I said: How could we do without Elias Khoury in this crisis of altering last year's dresses to suit today's fashion?

— Last year's dresses were a travesty. Did you see anything but cubes walking down the roads? Three cubits sufficed to make a dress. I suggest that these dresses be made into blouses, nothing more. And perhaps, if one is combined with another color, it may yield a passable dress.

— And your opinion of today's fashion?

— Today's fashion suits the woman's body in point of structure. It is natural that there should be a proportion whereby the distance from shoulder to waist is one third of the distance from waist to ankle; accordingly, today's dress beautifies the woman's body and brings out its lines.

— Fashion has changed with surprising speed.

— Ever since it turned toward the long, woman would not accept the fashion and tried to defy it—naturally, because of the economy in fabric of the short fashion, its ease of movement, and a familiarity the eye had grown used to. But the new fashions that arrived from Paris came exceedingly long—and in fashions, Paris is the ruling authority.

— And I asked him: Why is it Paris that creates the fashions?

— He said: There are several factors. The Parisians have an old tradition of dress. And the creators of fashion have many sources of inspiration, chief among them the existence of craft industries that supply the tailors' requisites and suggest invention to them—unlike what we see among the Americans. Fashion there, on their system of huge production, leaves the workman no freedom of invention; there is a set design which he follows, and fashion there is suited to woman's work, and their need is for inspiration rather than invention. And do not forget that the Louvre and the other museums of France are places of inspiration: most couturiers spend long hours among the immortal paintings there.

And the bookshops—shall I forget the bookshops of Paris, which abound in books of art, history, research, and pictures? The tailor spends most of his evenings among them.

— And what are the fashions of the coming season?

The dresses that display the new inventions are, in the first rank, the evening gowns; after them come the afternoon dresses. The tendency of the skirt is very wide, narrowing at the waist. The shoulders are low and without padding. Dresses in general are rich in trimmings; the neckline is wide—décolleté—and comes in many shapes, adorned by "lace" or the jabot. As for the everyday dress, it follows the others in fullness and length and in bringing out the slenderness of the waist. The sleeve (the japonaise) is still in fashion, as are the short tailleur and the wide, long skirt.

— And can these fashions live?

— Only by our giving up our present means of living, for no lady can do without the tramway and the bus, or ride the tramway in a skirt eighteen cubits around, or travel by airplane with more than two dresses, each weighing three or four kilos!