Evening Star Newspaper, April 22, 1923, Page 79

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. O©. PRIL 22 1923—PART Fashion Stamps Approval on the New Combination Costumes 1 BY ANNE RITTENHOUSE. ASHION s usually a little skep- tical of the ingenious. When a woman equips her Kitchen she may look with favor on & motor that will mix cake, beat eggs, buft silver, knead bread and peel the potatoes. She may even view with tolerance, born of necessity, & device that makes an impromptu guest room out of the erstwhile drawing room. But if she is one of the discriminat- ing she has no such tolerstion for presto-chango costumery. The new three or four plece cos- tumes, so called—for sometimes the words are misnomers and the three- piece costume has but two pleces and the four-plece only three—managed 10 pass muster. They do verge on the ingenlous. They do provide two or threo dress possibilities in a single costume. They do simplify the problem of dressing for possible changes of weather, and for the requirements of different occasions. But their clever- mess and ingenlousness are not obtru- sive; they are merely incidental. And fashion has marked them with a big unmistakable O. K. They conform type. Your three-plece costume may be one thing and that of your compan- fon at tea may be made up of an entirely different sort of combination, Yours may be a three-tier brown plaited crepe de chine skirt, worn with a tan organdie blouse with plaited ruffles at hips, elbows and neck, topped by a short cape of plaited brown crepe de chine tied at the neck with two-inch brown ribbon. And that of vour companlon over ths teacups may begin Wwith a straight- line printed silk frock overtopped by a detachable tunic of beige crepe. The wrap she has just let elip over the back of her chair—really an integral part of the costume—is, let us say, a three-quarter-length coat wrap of beige marocain heavily em- bellished with narrow tucks at shoul- ders, at hem and midway between. Then you look up at the striking Young woman passing your table, and, if your eye is keen for such matters, you realize that she wears one of thess new three-piece costumes, but hers s of a still different type. It is of blue crepe—marocain—and don't forget that dark blue is gradually gaining back some of the territory ' lost to black within recent years. It begins with a skirt of the dark-blue crepe drawn over toward the left side and showing wha! maker probably calls a the long end of the “jabot” in a point nearly to the floor. The blouse (no doubt attached to the skirt, though this detail you cannot see) is of beige georgetts, and there is a belted-in sort of overblouse with a Iittle short peplum that terminates in the back In & square cape. * % ok % HESE three-plece costumes as pre- sented this spring are in some cases evolved from the suit. In as many cases they are the outgrowth of the street frock. Sometimes you may look upon this new combination as the old-time sult coat and skirt, with the third plece, the blouse, usually attached to the skirt. Again you may merely think of it as a street frock, with a wrap thrown in to complete-the picture— and increase the dressmaker's profit. It has distinct advantages, however you look at it. It gives you insurance own possible bad judg: lecting a suitable blouse to wear with to no one definite your sult or wrap to wear with your street frock. There is a sort of economy about it, though the three- plece costume will always remain listed among the more expensive offerings of the dressmak But in these costum one has something suitable for vagaries in temperature and the demands of different hours of the day. 8ome of them do come very near to the ldeal of the busy women who a few years ago sought to work out the formula that would do twenty- four-hour-a-day duty, starting you out quite appropriately attired for war work or golf course and, with the skillful adjustment of a snapper here and there, as the hands of the clock went round, keeping you sult- ably attired for luncheon, for shop- ping, motoring, tea drinking, informal dining and more formal dancing. These gowns that never quite reached perfection might possibly have done 80, and would perhaps have solved the problem beautifully, had the problem not faded off into thin air like will o’ the wisps in the sunlight. Nobody really wanted that sort of ar The woman who didn't have time to stop for a change of attire once from the hour of rising to the hour of retiring usually solved her problem by getting into something that would do and then avoiding aft- ernoon and evening diversions that; would make this something inappro- priate. But those three-piace or four-piecs costumes, without making any pre- tense at solving any problem or lift-| ing burdens of dressing off women's | shoulders or satisfylng the hopes of | a single dress reformer, do in a measure offer the advantage of one costume with two or three possibill- ties. *x % ¥ ILK, both crepe and satin finish, i the material chosen for the wrap of the three or four piece costume this spring far oftener than the ‘woolen materials that we once asso- clated with the making of spring sults. This is not difficult to explain. The wrap itself is apt to be more voluminous. It needs a more pliant medium and a less weighty one if it is to be worn with any sort of com- fort after spring air has lost the tang of winter. The regulataion woolen suitings are remaining in favor for the strictly tailored two- plece suit, but that is an entirely dif- ferent proposition. The line of dis- tinction drawn between what the French conveniently dismiss as a tail- leur and the suit costume is wide and definite this spring. ‘The suits that we choose to call “mannish” have by no means luflaredi eclipse. Patou, in Paris, has been sponsoring them and has t the vogue for the straight, simply tail- ored sult worn with a matching cape for early spring sport wear. But fashion no longer permits us to match | new tucking really gives the effect of & plaited surface, with the ad- vantage that the tucks stay in place. Marocain and other crepes lend them- selves well to this sort of device, and not infrequently the wrap section of a three-plece costume will show the tucking by way of making a more elaborate and heavier surface than that of the frock or tunic or blouse beneath. In the beige crepe marocain cos- tume shown there is a three-quarter coat wrap very heavily embellished with tucks that hang heavily over| the crepe tunic beneath. Crepe de chine is the medium of the tucks in the gray costume, and no fabric less pliant than crepe de GREY CREPE DE CHINE FROCKS WITH ODD _ ARRANGEMENT OF TUCKS. THE GEORGETTE BIOUSE IS EMBROIDERED IN GREEN. ' |in a front panel and three horigontal | tucks appear at the end of the wide, long sleeves. It is not a suit that would appeal to the American who version to the distinctively French in clothes, but it shows which way the wind {s blowing. * ok ok ok IRST ocousin to tucking comes cording, dear to the heart of the French dressmaker. These cordings are fine and are placed close, some- lar, wide cuffs to the open sleeve: and sometimes on a cape Or Wrap & wide band around the hem. Frocks, hats, accessories worn out- |doors at many of the resorts have been qualified by many an observer | by that stock expression of theirs, | “a riot of color.” Perhaps it is easler {to let it go at that than to try to | trace any definite color trend in the { motley of shades worn by women of | varying taste and type. Then, too, | when there are women in the picture | wearing scarlet or bright blue or 'even green shoes to match scarlet, ! blue or green accessories, perhaps one |18 entitled to spak of the color scheme our tallored sport suits with the ver- | chine could possibly be used for tucks as riotous. dent lettuce leaf, canned salmon or lavender hyacinth, as some of us did last spring. Any left over of this sort that we may have on hand from last spring had best remain a left-over or take a trip to the dyeing estab- lishment, for the mannish suit of the spring is mannish in coloring as well. It s gray of the sort that we asso- clate with well bred English tweeds; it is fallow brown; it is beige; it is occastonally, not often, navy blue, and it is white. Tucking must be taken into con- sideration. Perhaps it is a natural of such circuitous construction. ‘The more pronounced types of these new tucked frocks show stralght all over tucking from shoulder to hem. There i{s a type of French three- piece suit that shows horizontal tuck- ing on the skirt and jacket produc- ing the effect of breadth of silhouette, which seems to hold less terror to the French woman of fashion than to the Amerioan. These tucks placed three or four inches apart—so that the straight plain skirt might have room for ten of them. The straight hip outcome of plaiting, and much of the length jacket also shows the tuck | But there are still | women who cling to their beiges, and | browns, their grays and navy blues, | |and even an occasional exemplar of | [ the trutsm that black ts always good. | To be sure, navy blue has regained much of its old-time favor in Paris. And it has regained this rather at ;the expense of black and the darker shades of brown than of beige. There {is still something undeniably smart about gray, which for some reason or other never seems in any danger of belng tricked into over-popularity. One hears much of the greens of the season, and often the most strik had not gone through a definite con- ! :mes fashioning an entire shawl col- | well dressed BROWN CREPE DE CHINE PLEATED SKIRT AND CAPE AND TAN ORDANDIE BLOUSE. ing frock or suit vou eee in a group | of expensively dressed women fs| green. Almond green is still good. And so is Lanvin green. Jades and emerald greens are not regarded as #0 suitable for daytime wear as for ovening. There is a new green— there always is a new green when the spring cloths show themselves, fsn't there?—and this green is hard to de- scribe. Sometimes it poken of as a mustard green, but that all depends on what color you assoclate with mustard. At any rate, it is as crude and difficult as a mustard green. But for all that it carries an air of smart- ness about it. Then there is the “whole gamut of color’—that is another way the sit- uation Is desoribed—and olothes are spoken of as having run this—what- ever it may be. This, too, is because in the favored hotels at tea hour you see less black and more warm browns than a season or two ago, because Apron Drapery The apron idea as it 18 incorporated hers and there in women's clothes this spring has nothing to suggest that other mode, when aprons were adopted as a purely decorative note— the perfod that we associate with the clothes worn by Marle Antolnette when she first went to the court of Versailles. ‘Then walsts were small as a nec- essary midpoint of the hour-glass sil- houette, and the decorative little aprons were of lace falling over the parting of the pannieres draped on either side and velling the inverted V of brocade or quilted petticoat that usually showed beneath. | part of the bouffant type of frock. It s more apt to be found in the frock of clinging or draped lines. imported dinner frock shown in the sketch you may see an apron of em- broldered black net over black satin —the skirt at the back between the edges of the apron being filled in by the loops and ends of an enormous bustle bow. Another mode that might be regard- ed as in the apron class is the plaited skirt that has been worn to some ex- tent at French resorts during the late winter and early spring. It was such a sensible, practicable plan that one wonders why it has not been more generally adopted on this side of the Atlantic. This frock showed a per- fectly plain underskirt with the effect of a plaited skirt, produced by tying a plaited apron around the front with a narrow beit fastening at the back. At the back the two sides of the plait- ed apron missed only eight or ten tinches of meeting. Of course, the advantage of such a ekirt Is that there are no plaits at back to be flat- tened out. It was with this object that the skirt was designed, but the | result showed an finteresting line | that made it worth while apart from | its practical advantage. | One wearies of considering how last year's frocks can be revamped to | meet the new season's demands. | There is far less of this sort of re- | vamping now than was once the case, Women have apparently made up their minds that they would rather wear a frock lacking in the earmarks of the latest mode than & frock robbed of expert finish and made a trifle dowdy by their own inexpert attempts at bring it up to date. Still thereare times when one feels constrained to modlfy a last year's track. The orna- mental apron and the bustle are ex- cellent contrivances in doing this with | Now the apron s seldom found as | In the | where you do see black you see it " combined with terra cotta reds or greens or other combinations that we glibly cail Egyptian—because thers are a few purples—one well-known actress has set the fashion for flams color combined with a vivid violet—s because there are Egyptian or Cleo- patra blues and odd greens that you cannot name; and because there are hats here and there with a perky trin of American beauty roses fastened at the very edge of the brim. (Copyright. 192 and the Bustle BY ANNE RITTENHOUSE, INNER FROCK OF BLACK SATIN WITH EMBROID- ERED APRON AND BUSTLE BOW AT BACK. a last year's evening frock. The plain { stright up-and-down evening frock that hangs forlorn and neglected in your wardrobe will yield to the treat- ment. Take off the old girdle, the festoon of enormous flowers, or what- ever marks the dividing line between skirt and bodice. Attach your lace apron and then cover the juncture of the apron at the top with a wide crushed girdle, leaving ends long enough to form a bustle at the back like the one shown in the sketch. Vety often this girdle and bustle ef- ‘fect i8 produced by six or seven yards of very wide ribbon. (Coprrigh Smashing of German War Machine Has Doomed Many Plants By FRANK G. CARPENTER. IME years after our oivil war a blind and crippled Union sol- dler leaned against a building on the corner of State and Madison strests, Chicago. The man had lost both legs and his body rested on the stumps which were covered with leather. One arm wae badly maimed and with the other he held out a cup and asked for alms. As the crowd went back and forth a man or woman now and then dropped fn a few pennies, & nickel, or per- haps a dime, but times wers hard and the pickings were small. At last a straight, fine-looking man with a broad-brimmed felt hat and military alr came up. He stopped a moment and then threw a silver dollar into the cup and started on. As the big coin struck the tin the soldier felt it and called out saying. “Won't you stop a moment, sir, and tell who is %0 kind to an old Union soldler? It may be you were in the army and we fought side by side. The giver re- plled, “T doubt it. The truth is I was 2 Confederate officer and my chlef reason for giving that dollar was because you are the only Yank I have vet seen who has been trimmed up to my entire satisfaction.” This incident, notwithstanding the vast amount that has been published ~oncerning war factories working in secret and vast stores of hidden mu- nitions, might well represent the feel- ings of the French and some others of the allies if they could wee the actual conditions of the Germans of today. The control commission, which under the treaty of Versallle: was to take over and destroy all the material and machinery for making munitions of war belonging to the Germans, has done a good job. Dur- ing my stay here I have gone through many of the big war factories and have eeen the work of destruction. I have talked with the heads of the industrial institutions who have, metaphorically speaking, turned from the making of swords to the making of plowshares, and h before me some flgures showing just what has been done. EE P until October 1, 1921, thers were destroyed 53,000 big guns, 38,000 trench mortars, 27,000 gun carriages, 102,000 machine guns and about 6,000,000 rifies. At that time all of the military schools had been 4 missed, the fortresses dismantled, and the commissions of control had their staffs of experts and officers watoh- ing every large factory. Even now constant inspection is golng on in all the industrial centers, and it would seem to me a physical impossibility that any manufacture of munitions of war could be carried on without their knowledge. The commissions began thelr work as soon as the treaty was signed. Thers were al- most 2,000 members who were grad- ually reduced {n number until 1922, when there were still several hundred. During the lite of these commis- wions theyahave-inspested -more than. ten thousand different factories and more or less destroyed one thousand of them. The factories carefully ex- amined were of every description, from those making poisonous gases, explosives, and blg guns, to even some making tobacco, snuff, choco- late and artificial eyes. Speaking of the latter, a former captain of a Ger- man war industry said to me: “I could never understand how they con- wtrued glass eyes as war material, but one commission spent seven days visiting such an establishment at Wiesbaden. They did not destroy fit, but when they left they could have tarted a factory to turn out such eyes for any war of the future.” Indeed, the Germans are sensitive about the destruction carried on by the control commission. They claim that some of the members, notably the French and Japanese, have been stealing their trade secrets, and that the military destruction has often been with the idea of crippling peace industries which compete with the trade of certain of the allies. In other words, they are charging the French with carrying on somewhat the same policy that they themselv adopted when they blew up the French factories and maliciously de- stroyed their machinery during the war. The Germans object to the smash- ing of fleld glasses, telescopes and other optical instruments on the .ground that they might be used in warfare, and one of them hopped up and down in his rage as he showed me some bushels of costly lenses that had been shattered to bits on that ground. They want to go on making gas maske, saying that they must have them for protection against the sulphur and other poisonous vapors found in the min and they want the right to make any kind of wire- less telephone or telegraph, notwith- standing such {nstruments can be used for war. * K F % HEY are especially sore over the fact that they are not allowed to make any airplanes or Zeppelins which can carry more than 1,400 pounds each, nor ascend as high as 14,000 feet, nor go faster than 110 miles an hour. They say, also, that the control commission has prohib- fted them from making riding breeches and uniforms, which pre- vents their export of costumes for the police, porters and chauffeurs of SBouth America. In fact, the work of the control commission has been thoroughly done. One of the officlals of the Union of German Industries tells me that he has investigated the destruo- tion of 337 factories, and that the loss in them was some hundreds of mil- lions of dollars. Al kinds of ma- chines for the making of munitions were destroyed, and the head of one of the larg: German institutions said in his establishment alone 60,000 such machines were crushed by means of & magnetic crane. He has & photograph showing how =a fine lathe ‘'was lifted forty, feet. in, the aix [ Frank G. Carpenter Tells How Allied Control Commission Broke Up One Thousand Fac- tories in Course of Its Performance of a Great Task—Ten Times as Many Have Been In- spected—Notable Speed Made in Changing Industries From Active War Basis to Conditions of Peace—Director Explains Some of Difficulties in Keeping Men Employed and Obtaining Markets. “THE MEN WHO MADE BY BOMBS AND SHELLS HURLED ACROSS NOO MAN’S LAND AT THE ALLIED TROOPS ARE NOW WORKING ON PEACE GOODS IN THE FACTORIES §' and dropped, shattering it to pleces. Another photograph exhibited a pile of rifies as big as & hay-stack, all In pieces, and others showed the rem- nants of boilers and furnaces and even smokestacks that were torn down and crushed. As I understand it, the Germans have not objected "to the destruction of the tools and ma- chines that could be used for no pur- pose other than warfare, but they are objecting to the breaking up of dyna- mos and all machinery which can be easily adapted to the industries of peace and which will have to be r¢ placed by new machinery of the same kind. Notwithstanding this destruction, it ia wonderful how rapidly, the induse< tries of Germany have been changed from an active war basis to one of peace industries. In most of the fac- tories I have visited every vestige of arms and munitions making has been wiped out, and one would never sup- pose that they had been anything else than ordinary industrial plants. To show you what has been done by the control commission and how the big war factories have been transformed, I called upon Dr. Wein- lig, director general of the Deutsche ‘Werke here in Berlin, and then went out to see the great factories at Spandau, which before the war were employing something like 100,000 men. The Deutsche Werke was the organization of the kalsers war facs F THEIR MUNITIONSMAKING EQUIPMENT.” tories independent of the Kyupps and other private institutions. It was financed from the imperial treasury and operated under the direction of the government. It still belongs to the government and therefore i{s an officlal civil service institution. Thé Deutsche Werke has fourteen differ- ent establishments and during the war they employed altogether more than a quarter of & million men. One of the biggest was the works at Span- dau, another was at Klel, on the Bal- tic, and others were scattered here and there throughout Germany. Dur- ing the war all worked day and night, and their machinéry was red hot un- ti] the time of the armistice.. turned as far as possible to the works of peace, but the number of employes has been greatly cut down owing to the dificulty of changing the ma chinery and to the destruction done by the control commission. Still, all of ‘the institutions:are more-or less busy. 3 * ok ko - URING:my: talk with Dr. Weinlig I'asked him what soft of peace goods they wers now. turning out. He ‘rplied: “We have experimented on’ more. than' ten thousand different articles and our successful experi- ments include freight cars, automo- biles, motor cycles, wagons and agri- cultural implements. We are making jand Belgium and also office furni- {ture and iron bedsteads.” We make { electric irons, toys and machine tools, and also emery-paper, canvas and ar- | tificial leather and silk. The space |occupled 1s only a fraction of that ! we used during the war and many of the bufldings are vacant, as we have | not yet been able to buy new peace ;mlch!ntry to fill them. So far our |exports are small. We are shipping |threshers and other agricultural ma- | | chinery to South America. We hope | later on to do a good business with Russia, but all that depends upon now raw materials are so high and must be paid for in gold, so that we are unable to buy much of them. “It is not only the high gold cost of raw materials, but it is this pe: petual rise and fall of the mark that makes it almost impossible for us to do business,’ continued Dr. Wein- lig. “Our values change every day and we have no basis for contracts. What seems to be a mark profit to- day is a decided loss tomorrow and we cannot replace the goods at the prices we sell them for. We shall have no successful manufacture until we have a stabilized mark. We are suffering also from a lack of work- Ing efficiency on account of the dis- satisfaction of the men at their low Men will not work unless they feel they are fairly paid, and you can get no spirit into them under our pres- ent conditions.” “1 understand that your ordinary [ factory wages are now about twenty- five cents a day?” “Yes” replied Dr. Weinlig, “but that is not enough for the ‘men to buy more than their bare food, to say nothing of clothing. The wages of all are pitifully small. Take my own case. Before the war I earned more In eight days in gold value than I-c&n now earn-in a year, was then & millionaire and I had 2 £ood ‘income from my Investments, which were in stacks and bonds and other giit-edged securities. Today I am worth practically noththg: end I really work for my bread. But you can mee something of our actual sit uation by going through the works. You may go where you please and make photographs and talk with the workmen, for I would like to have wyour .people know just what we are trying to do to get on our feet.” * k¥ K S a result of this talk I have visited Spandau and " driven about through its buildings and yards, which are mors than twenty miles in circumference. The place made me think of some of the ruins I saw in northern France. Large buildings have been entirely demolished and I went through struoture after struc- ture of enormous size out of which all the machinery was taken and shattered to pieces. I remember one boller house covering an acre which had contained eighteen large boilers. These were taken out and brokgn into These factories have now. all b:cnlwouden hauses for northern France|bits. The steam pipes were torn out ] changed political conditions, and just | wages and the high cost of living.| ¢ and even the concrete floors dug over | fo'a deptl of four or five feet, so t! the whole looked like a garden inside | the bare walls of red brick | Everywhere about the works are piles of scrap jron, the pieces ranging | in size from a pea to some that weigh lone ton or more. The scraps wero {formerly lathes, boring machines, |steam engines and dynamos. There are also piles of broken munitions, rifles and all sorts of weapons of war. The destruction of the machinery was enormous. The official who went with me said that something like twenty thousand machines had been taken out and destroyed in this plant alone, asserting that it would take elghty million dollars in labor and material to replace the machinery and adapt the plant to making peace €00ds with an eficfency equal to that which it had for making munitions. He objected to the control commis- slon preventing the manufacture of shotguns, to which purpose many of the old rifle machines had beén changed, each machine having bean cut with acetylene flames to make sure that it could never be uscd for actual war work again. There o some hundreds engaged in such work who will have to be thrown out of employment if the making of shot- guns is prohibited. “But,” said I, “It seems to me the control commission has a good excuse for prohibiting the manufacture of any kind of guns’ A “I suppose it has.” replied the su- perintendent, “but shotguns cannot be used in warfare, and the same is trus | o5 toy pistols. We can adapt our | machinery to making such things and |our workmen have been trained to | such manufacture. There is one dis- trict in Thuringia whero they have made nothing but these rifles and shotguns for hunting purposes for many years. ' The work was scat- tered through hundreds of small shops and emploved thousands of men. We need work for these peopla and we do not know what to do with them. We can't feed them and we have not the peace machinery to put them to work.” * k ¥ Kk RING my stay I went through parts of the factory making motor cycles, agricultural tools and other peace goods, stopping here and there to talk with the workmen. One man in the automobile factory, who has a similar job to that for which thousands in Detroit get wages of $8 and upward.per day, told me he w getting a number of marks per hour, which is equal to just 2 cents of our money. -He works elght hours and his daily wage is just under 16 cents, I asked him if he was married. He replied: - “No; I have a mother and father to support. And, besides, how can I get marrted when to furnish a kitchen alone would cost me several hundreéd thousand marks, to say nothing of furnishing the bedroom adjolning which -might make my home?" 3 ‘opyright, 1923. by Carpenter's Wortd . ravels.) o —— 4