Just Swell

One of the odd notes in Paris fashions this spring is the maternity-style top --for women without child. It has a loose, comfortable style that was born of the peasant blouses still available in the bazaars of Europe. If that isn't enough to give the nonpregnant pause, two young Manhattan women have designed and are selling the Pregnancy Puff--an egg-shaped, beige satin pillow that ties on round the middle with pink and blue satin ribbons. It has just one function: worn under clothing, it makes a woman look pregnant.

Why would anyone pay $20 (a deluxe model, custom made and bearing the face of a loved one, sells for as much as $50) for the Pregnancy Puff? There are practical reasons, insists K.T. Maclay, a married writer who invented the P.P. jointly with Unmarried Designer Linda Sampson. For one thing, she insists, it almost guarantees the wearer a seat on a crowded bus. For another, it is a surefire conversation piece at a cocktail party. She reports that one anxious mother bought a puff for her 17-year-old daughter to wear on a cross-country car trip, explaining that "she'll be safer if people think she's pregnant."

There are psychological advantages too. "You feel your whole psyche changing when you wear one," says K.T. "We haven't had backaches or varicose veins, but we've developed some strange cravings." Adds Linda: "I've stopped chewing gum. A Madonna figure shouldn't chew gum." The Pregnancy Puff also seems to affect the beholder. "People think we're pregnant and tell us how great our complexions look," explains K.T. "They tell us we glow. And maybe we do, because we have this funny secret."

Raising the Roof

Olde England--the phrase conjures visions of red-cheeked lads frolicking with shy maids, of nut-brown ale bubbling in pewter flagons, and sturdy oak-beamed, thatched-roof cottages. These days, the red-cheeked lads and shy maids are living it up in Chelsea, and the nut-brown ale is thin and sour, but cottages with roofs thatched in reed or straw are back in style. The British government is acting to preserve the best examples, and the thatchers themselves --an independent breed that was dying out--suddenly have more work than they can possibly handle.

Until a decade ago, thatchers and their roofs were among England's more conspicuous anachronisms. "Rural landowners," says Thatcher John Dodson, "were pushing the old cottages over, or burning them because they weren't wanted." Now the surviving thatched structures, many built in the 16th and 17th centuries, are fetching dazzling sums on the market. A small, shabby cottage that might have brought $1,000 as recently as 1962 now sells for 20 times that price; larger houses, often short of plumbing but with two or three bedrooms, go for about $50,000.

Why the belated boom in thatched roofs? "It's the London people who are coming out here," says Dodson, "buying their weekend cottages and fixing them up." Explains Designer-Photographer Sir Cecil Beaton, who is so enamored of thatch that he even thatches his garden walls: "I champion beauty and impracticability."

Aside from the picturesqueness of it all, however, a thatched roof provides several definite benisons. Its thickness (about a foot, on the average) keeps noises out and it is a great weather insulator as well. But there are some drawbacks: once a thatched roof begins to deteriorate, birds find their way in and drive aviphobes crazy with their chirping. Some roofs have mice, too. Says Lord Compton: "Unfortunately, I'm allergic to cats, so all I can do is put out traps." A more spectacular peril is the danger from fire: a thatched roof, once touched off, explodes in flames.

Until after the turn of the century, thatchers were stock characters in nearly every village in the southern half of England. "They're a lonely sort of people," says Dodson, whose family have been thatchers for generations in the village of Huntingdon near Cambridge. "They've always been a roguish lot who'd just as soon poach from the local squire as earn money thatching."

It is harsh work. For a cottage with two or three bedrooms, four or five tons of reed or straw are required, and because thatchers prefer to work alone, the job often will take four to five weeks, all out-of-doors labor in England's cold and windy weather. Thatchers pick and choose their jobs: most prefer to work only in their home area and simply turn down the increasingly frantic demands that they take on jobs elsewhere. There are only about 400 master thatchers left, but their ranks are being swelled by young men, including several college dropouts, who have been lured by the new status of thatchery.

There is one cloud on the thatchers' horizon. To meet the increasing demand for thatched roofs, Devonshire Businessman John Fox has devised an imitation and partially assembled thatch. Solid fiber glass, it comes in any color (golden brown/mature thatch and yellow-gold/newly laid thatch are the two preferred varieties). It takes less than a week to put up, is guaranteed birdproof and verminproof, and should last several lifetimes. Scoffs a conventional thatcher: "I suppose if you have not got very good eyesight and stand far enough away it could pass for thatch. But man can't improve on nature."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.