2 APRIL 1965, Page 13

a jitterbugging crowd in drab utility clothing blocking up his

gleaming floor: 'Where was my lovely dancing? Where were all my graceful foxtrots? I said to myself.' He might well have asked where had all his dresses gone. Before the war ladies wore ankle-length chiffon, often with chaste floating panels; now they wear an ex- aggerated version of the kind of dress normally associated with fairies, minus the wings and wand. For 'modern dancing' (waltz, foxtrot, quickstep, tango) the uniform, rigidly adhered to, is a dress ending midway down the calves, with a sticking-out skirt made from a piece of net between fifty and ninety yards long. It has to be washed in the bath, transported in a poly- thene bag, and kept in a room of its own— `Don't ask me where you put it if you live in a flat,* said the specialist dressmaker who gave me these facts. Dresses have been growing per- ceptibly bulkier each year, but she thought they had now probably reached a maximum beyond