KATHARINE WHITEHORN LESLIE ADRIAN ROBIN McDOUALL CYRIL RAY PATRICK CAMPBELL

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Roundabout

Model Misses

By KATHARINE WHITEHORN

The show was put on mainly for foreign buyers in the 'fashion salon' of Celanese House (a salon not really well adapted for fashion parades, since only those in the gangways and the ront row can ever catch sight of a hem). This show closely resembled the Fashion Group's last one last May : there was the same excellent selection of clothes, the same choreographic parades of girls modelling in batches; perhaps rather fewer of those gold lions without which any Britain-boosting occasion is unthinkable. 'Twice the number of buyers,' exulted the Chairman of the Group; but apparently about the same number of chairs. We did not, this time, have Bronwen Pugh stealing the show by walking across the stage with her hair all over her face reading a magazine; but on the other hand the curtain didn't stick this time. The surroundings still seemed amateurish in comparison with the clothes; but the contrast was not so great.

It was a marathon parade of nearly 300 dresses, on forty girls, of whom perhaps ten, at the most, were really good models. The girls may, for all I know, have been excellent photographic models—but that is a very dif- ferent thing, depending much less on move- ment. Live modelling is essentially dramatic. A good model can come on bared to the waist without a flicker of embarrassment ; she can drop her gloves, scowl at the audience, laugh at her own dress, slap the compere or fall down a flight of steps without stepping out of character for a second; without the audience even beginning to wonder if she has lost confidence.

• For women do not dress to please men or please themselves or show how rich they are or even to annoy other women. They dress to give themselves confidence—which, according to the occasion, they may get from pleasing men or annoying women and so on (even, in some cases, from just blending indistinguishably into the landscape). It follows that if the wearer of a dress shows a lack of confidence no one will want to buy it, and the model is a flop.

The process works simply enough. A dress makes a good model feel in a certain way : makes her languorous, childlike, furious, remote, sump- tuous, innocent, superior or simply intoxicated with her own beauty. If she knows her job, she will act that emotion when she wears it, and make the audience feel that the dress is express-

ing the emotion—that it is the perfect garment in which to feel angry or languorous or gay. There will be no hesitancy, no hair's-breadth gap of identity between the dress and the wearer. Any audience can sense this fusion : and if a girl does enough for the dress, they think the dress is doing it for the girl; and buy it.

This is advanced stuff, as practised by the big Paris dress houses; many quite competent models manage just by looking confident in a general way. But the more dramatic the presentation.• the more important it is; Michael Whittaker showed his unawareness of it not only by his remark that Paris models are the worst in the world (which is nonsense), but by his show. Numbers of girls had

• to stand against pillars as if transfixed by knife- throwers, while others twirled at the centre of the stage—a terrible strain on self-possession : their expressions tended to slip woefully as soon as they were no longer the focus of attention. Girls with no acting talent had to throw their arms in the air; there was one ghastly moment when a girl had to swing a cloak dramatically over her shoulder, and did it as if she were declaring this bull-fight open. Several of the girls looked like NI. Hulot's Englishwoman, and one, blinking bravely as she revealed her bikini, was Joyce Grenfell to the life. Another girl, with a dark southern skin, stripped as if she meant it. and actually raised a clap.

Instead of confidence, we had the uneasy self- conscious stylisation of waiting-maids in a village pageant : the 'tennis, anyone'?' brightness of a Thirties musical. We had the Moss Bros. Look- girls wearing dresses they must be careful not to smudge (a first-class model disdains her clothes half the time). Worst of all, we had 'Here's me in this dress, I think'—the ,girl who had no idea what the point of her dress is.

Let us be fair : there was some good modelling being done. A small, perky blonde who looked like a suburban version of Lady Barnett had a confidence any prima donna might envy : and there were two or three pretty enough to carry off anything. Hannerle Dehn has a sort of loopy amble that does wonders for anything she wears (and she even managed to put out her tongue at a friend in the audience without loss of confidence). And several were obviously experienced enough to get away with murder.

And at least, this time, they did not show up any of the unevenness by showing the same dress on two different girls.

I remember at the Fashion Group of London's last show there was a dress of sumptuous black velvet. Sex pounded the air around the model as she moved, lost in her own unprintable thoughts: a violent red rose blared at her naked waistline. And after a while another girl came on. wearing a nice black dress with a pretty red flower at the back. The same dress.

Oh, do put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington: send her to repertory for five years, send her to Stanislaysky, even send her to RADA: teach the girl to act before you ever let her be a model.

• A new dress fabric called 'Lolita' has been pro- duced by Ascher, who describe it as lush and voluptuous. Presumably the next thing will be a zip-fastener called Liaison Dangereuse.