Fashion Notes

Shoulders are vaguely broader. Bosoms conform to high, lifted lines. Everyone agrees on the minute waist line. Full skirts--"the bouncing, double, swing skirt"--are shorter, straight moulded skirts are longer. The steatopygous bustle is definitely in.

Such reports from the opening of Paris fashion shows have grated on Nazi ears for the past fortnight as Schiaparelli followed Mainbocher, and Paquin, Patou and Balenciaga demonstrated that, whoever runs the world, Paris intends to go on making his wife's clothes.

Last week Nazi journals forlornly counterattacked, warning that chic, slim figures do not fit into German life, that dresses which are good-looking in one season are the same the next, that German men do not like to see their wives in a new dress or hat every few months, that women should learn "to abandon a dress when it is used up and not when it becomes unfashionable." Prime mover in this audacious campaign is brush-haired, portly Dr. Robert Ley (pronounced Lie), Labor Front Leader whose tirades against alcohol, nicotine and debauchery have long excited the mirth of knowing Nazis who recall his bibulous "Strength Through Joy" trip accompanied by bevies of blooming beauties. Opening a "House for the Care of Beauty" in Berlin recently, Dr. Ley, whose wife is no dowdy, damned fashions because they waste materials, "which is not in the least in accordance with the present economic policy." Promptly cuing in, Das Schwarze Korps, official organ of the Storm Troopers, editorialized :

"No one could accuse Dr. Ley of hating beauty . . . [but] WHAT IS THE USE OF THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST WASTE IF THE FASHION INDUSTRY DEVALUATES TEXTILES? . . . Other nations elect queens with beautiful legs, beauty queens, naked queens, but Germany honors women with many children and therewith honors a beauty that is uninfluenced by any fashions."

Roundly Das Schwarze Korps rapped those who think the present return to corsets, bustles, "ribbons, lace and pleats" would fill the bill. Corsets are bad for women's health, especially if pregnant. As for hats: "How could a woman look well with an odd Australian stork perched on a beer mat on top of her head?" But the editors pulled their punches to meet feminine critics, explained earnestly: "All this is no fulmination against lipstick, powder and silk stockings; quite the contrary. . . . Every woman should be beautiful; every woman should have the opportunity to accentuate her natural charms . . . so that she can not only carry out her duties, but also bring pleasure into the life of the working and fighting man."

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