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The Citizen, 1991-02-27, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1991. PAGE 5. > ^2 Arthur Black If high fashion is dying it's about time No offense intended to the talented and tasteful typographical Trojans who put this edition together, but reading a good fat newspaper is a little like browsing through a garbage dump. You can wade and sift through the headlines and bylines, photos and supermarket ads, knowing that no matter how dull or irrelevant or repulsive the material gets, you just might turn up a veritable nugget in the next instant. It happened to me while slogging through a hippo-sized issue of the Toronto Daily Star the other day. One minute my eyes were glazing over from a surfeit of stories about layoffs and shutdowns and downturns, the next minute I was trans­ fixed by a headline that read: HAUTE COUTURE IS DYING What? High Fashion mortally wounded? The wonderful people at Dior, Blass, Klein, De La Renta, Cassini, Cardin, Lauren, Gucci and Givenchy all now contemplating pink slips? Those New York/Paris/Rome soothsayers of style who gave us the maxi, the midi and the Empire * The International Scene Holland is more than just tulips BY RAYMOND CANON I must confess that Holland was a country of which I had heard a great deal even before I ever set foot on Dutch soil. It was supposed to be a land of windmills with wall-to-wall dikes. Everybody wore wooden shoes, or so the story went, and the country was filled with tulips. That is tantamount, I guess, to saying that all Swiss yodel, ski or play the Alphorn, or that every Canadian is a hockey player. All I know is that, when I first crossed the Dutch border close to Roermond, there was not a dike, a canal nor a windmill to be seen. It was, if I remember correctly, quite a while before I saw any of the three. The dikes caught up to me eventually and with a vengeance. One day I found myself cycling across the long dike which separates the Zuider Zee, the great inland lake, from the North See. The dike had to be at least 20 miles long (it seemed like 100) and, as luck would have it, we were cycling into the wind. I honestly thought that I would never get to the other side. As 1 travelled throughout the country, I found that there was a neatness parallel to that of Switzerland. I also found that it was much wiser to speak English than German for reasons which you can probably guess. Finally, 1 found that the economy was much more mixed than 1 had been led to believe; it was not all a land of cheese and tulips. Since that first trip I have been to Holland on a number of occasions, I actually worked there for a while and, since the language is about half way between German and English, I learned to speak it as quickly as I could. One benefit was that it got me around the linguistic problem to which 1 referred above. The Dutch I met were surprised to find somebody that would take the time to learn their language and, since 1 had become a Canadian by that time, I was shown no end of kindness; Canada was, after all, one of Line - not to mention models who looked liked refugees from a Nazi Death Camp? Out of a job? This is the best news I’ve heard since Paul Henderson decided to shoot instead of pass. According to the news story beneath the headline, high fashions demise is strictly a matter of economics. Nearly half the firms that buy haute couture lines are American and thanks to the recession, they aren’t buying the way they used to. “We started to feel the effects of the general economic situation last May” lamented the general director of a major French couturier, people were more hesitant about buying.” It’s kind of like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” story writ large. I find it difficult to imagine that High Fashion, which held us all to ransom for years, is suddenly on its deathbed. More than years - centuries. Human­ kind’s fascination with bodily adornment can be traced back to 7500 BC when Egyptian shepherds in the Nile Valley discovered that the oil from crushed castor beans would both protect them from the sun and give them a George Hamilton-style tan. Pretty soon Egyptians with preten­ tions to glamor were slapping henna on their hair and kohl on the bags under their eyes - not to mention all manner of oils, pastes, powders and unguents. Half a century before the stable scene in Bethle­ hem, Cleopatra was dabbing red ochre on her cheeks and painting her upper eyelids blue-black and lower lids green. their favourite countries. Not surprisingly, Holland is one country whose fortunes I follow carefully and I take a considerable amount of pleasure in reporting that it has been one of the star performers in the western world as far as economic progress is concerned. It has managed to keep its rate of both inflation and unemployment considerably lower than that of Canada and the Dutch, who have a thrift of their own, have managed much better than we have in living within the means of the country. Canada and Holland share something in common: they both have what is known as open economics. This means that a great deal of their produce is sold to other countries and so exports exceed imports. However, while the Dutch have managed to maintain a balance of payments surplus of about $10 billion a year, we show a deficit of twice that. In short, they live within their means: we most definitely do Ministry helps rural families THE EDITOR, The success of the Queen’s Bush Rural Ministries over the past three years can be directly attributed to those who have given of their time, talent and financial support. The Queen’s Bush greatly appreciated these contributions, as do the people who have used the Queen’s Bush for assistance during their difficulties. The new year is already seeing a broadening of our scope of services. During the past three years, we have dealt primarily with problems arising from the farming crisis gripping the rural communi­ ties. We now with increasing frequency hear from faltering small business owners and people, who for the first time in their lives, are unemployed and despondent. These callers present a new challenge to the Queen’s Bush Rural Ministries. Help­ ing people with an entirely new set of problems requires the involvement of the entire communities in which they live. The Queen’s Bush is grateful for any volunteer Could Coco Chanel be far behind? We’ve gone through some pretty Dali- esque fashion trends through the ages. The Roman poet Ovid advocated a face pack of raw egg and mashed narcissus bulbs for smooth skin. Nero and his acolytes smeared lead and chalk on their faces. Elizabeth the first plucked out her eye­ brows and dyed her hair red. Catherine of Medici decreed that all the ladies of her court must have a 13 inch waist. (The beanpole model Twiggy measured 22 inches around the equator). In the 19th century women of fashion wore bathing suits made of wool, with a fitted bodice, a high neck, full sleeves, a knee length skirt, under which were bloomers, full-length black stockings and low canvas shoes. When wet, the bathing suits often out­ weighed the bathers. And then of course, there’s the zoot suit, the topless gown, the sack dress and Madonna. Clearly fashion has been quite insane for some time. And now it’s dying. “These are the last days of haute couture” mourns Jacques Mouclier, head of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. “Women don’t need it anymore ... people are not in the mood to go out and spend their money on haute couture dresses.” I hope Monsieur Mouclier is right, but I doubt any complex economic virus is to be blame. I suspect haute couture is succumb­ ing to the same thing that killed off the dinosaurs. It’s just too stupid to live. not. We share another activity; both coun­ tries are heavy investors in other countries. However, the Dutch are even more active than we are. A look at the figures in both the United States and Britain show that they are in second place in the amount of money invested. They seem to have gone about it rather quietly; when I tried these figures out on some of my colleagues, not one was aware of the extent of this financial activity. There has to be a hole in the Dutch dike somewhere along the line and there is. Again they are in somewhat the same situation as Canada in that both countries have rather considerable deficits in their internal budgets. The cause of this deficit has been the same in the two countries; it is the increasing cost of social welfare payments that are doing us in. When the Dutch get the answer to that problem, I hope they pass it on to Canada. H advisors who have expertise in small business situations, unemployment and morale boosting methods which are des­ perately needed. Our number is 392-6090, and is on a recorder if the phone isn’t being answered personally. All calls are dealt with prompt­ ly- As a Co-ordinator for the Queen's Bush Rural Ministries, 1 have been amazed at the results which can be achieved in situations where the problem seemed insurmountable. All it takes is some ingenuity and an approach which will suit the circumstance. Depression can set in during the winter months when emotional, spiritual and financial worries lay you low. Confidential and understanding help is only a phone call away. Just dial 392-6090, and perhaps together, we can conquer what seems impossible to do alone. BRIAN IRELAND CO-ORDINATOR. Letter from the editor I’m confused BY KEITH ROULSTON I don’t know about you but 1 envy the peace activists on one side and the staunch supporters of the Gulf War on the other for their certainty. Me, I’m confused. I find I waver back and forth a lot when I think about the war. On one hand I can get upset with the atrocities Saddam Hussein carries out but on the other I can mistrust the American reasons for doing some of the things they do. I worry, for instance, that the American urge to regain its manhood after nearly 20 years of brooding about the loss of Vietnam may lead Americans to look for an excuse to ignore diplomatic possibilities for peace in favour of launching a ground war. I worry that the American obsessions with getting rid of Saddam may have led them to use any pretext to launch the war and really smash his forces. I worry too that the Americans, tasting victory and wanting to get Saddam, may not want to stop with just getting Iraq out of Kuwait but may want to push on into Iraq despite all the talk about supporting the United Nations resolution. On the other hand Saddam Hussein is the kind of person who you can understand the Americans not trusting when it comes to peace treaties. Iraqis had already started setting oil wells on fire in Kuwait before the Soviet peace plan was rejected. If there had been a ceasefire would it simply have given them more time to carry out more destruction on Kuwait? The Americans were telling tales of Iraqi soldiers rounding up people for mass execution in Kuwait. The Americans were trying to justify their decision to start the ground war so the reports have to be taken with a grain of salt, but if it was happening then the sooner the invasion got under way, the more Kuwaiti lives could be saved. Which brings me to one of the problems I have with the peace movement in the West. Yes, 1 know that in the long run war isn’t a solution but how can people be so sure the coalition is all wrong? Peace activists have managed to reduce the whole war in an Iraq verses U.S. event under which situation, their distrust of the U.S. makes it almost more to blame for the situation than Saddam. Ignored in the whole affair is the fate of the people of Kuwait. Peace activists readily point to the fact that the Kuwaiti government wasn’t exactly democratic in the first place to show how flimsy our excuse is for intervening. Few seem to ask themselves how they’d like to be the innocent people of Kuwait with a tyrant like Hussein marching in and rampaging around the country. When the war is over and the story is written about what happened to the people of Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation, we may wish the coalition had acted sooner. Although we can talk about how useless war is, and how diplomacy should prevent war, I’d like to think that if Canada was invaded by a large enemy, other countries would come to our rescue and not just sit on the sidelines tut-tutting. There are times when I wonder if the peace activists aren’t using good sentiments as an excuse just not to care about others. If Hitler were alive and we were faced with the situation Neville Chamberlain faced at Munich, for instance, would the peace activists be on the side of appeasement? Could they use their beliefs in the evil of war as an excuse to stand by and watch Jews slaughtered? I wish I had the answers that the extremists of the two sides have? Instead I find myself against war but wondering if, saaly, war isn’t sometimes necessary just as policemen sometimes have to use force to keep the peace. I’m for the United Nations but worry that it may be being used by the U.S. for its own purposes. In short, I’m just plain confused.