WOMEN IN TROUSERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3264, 8 July 1911, Page 9

WOMEN IN TROUSERS.

A SWISS CUSTOM

In the Swiss canton .Valais (says the “Daily Telegraph”) there is a village named C-hampery, and here women have for generations worn the jupe-culotte, quietiy and unostentatiously, uncoilscious that there is- anything at all remarkable in tlieir attire. . So wliile the Western world amuses itself with .renewed discussions about the proper attire for women, these village maidens and elderly dames go ,about their day s work dressed in the debatable garment. Extremely picturesque they look in these - culottes, which are cut exactly the .same as those worn by the fathers, husbands, and brothers. They are made of .rough blue serge, that stands the wear and tear of bard' life. For a Laid life do those women live amongst the mountains, in a village perched on a green slope, where the industry is pasturage. From morning to night it is the duty of ‘every maiden of the canton to follow the coivs and to - watch over the flocks, for which purpose her costume >is a most convenient one. Travellers who pass through the district usually stop to admire the slim forms or the girls as they trip lightly up the mountain-side dressed in their blue garb and wearing scarlet shawls, draped over their-heads, falling lightly to the left shoulder. Many a girl starts out before daybreak, and does not return to i lie village until nightfall. There eve fiequent wet days; much snow, and stoims rend the valley. The close-fitting costume is Yvell adapted for the , wearer’s needs, which is the best that can be said of any garb. _ Whilst fashionable designers drape chiffon and muslin, and tax tlieir ingenuity to cut panels of fine cloth, velvet, or serge, to give the fashionable jupe-culotte something of tlio appearance of skirts, these slender, graceful girls, and elderly women whose forms have lost all pretence to grace, go | serenely on their way, dressed in clothes hout after the same pattern as those ’ worn by their husbands, made of the same stuff and of the identical color.