The Fair Ladies

Sir, as one who has reached the respectable state of a grandfather and who therefore is supposed by some not to take any notice of or interest in such things, I approach you with diffidence. I have, Sir, however, of recent months received the impression that a remarkable transformation has overtaken our womanhood, both young and not so young. To my eyes, watching them going about their daily tasks, they appear to have flowered in an extraordinary fashion . . .

So Grandfather Patrick Graham memorialized the London Times last summer. Ever since, passing tourists and fellow fanciers have been hastening to reassure him that he was right as rain. Something of a momentous nature has indeed happened to British women. Softly, silently, in the beneficent climate of Britain's postwar affluence, they have burst forth into startling bloom. The transformation should end, hopefully forever, the long winter of discontent when British women stood armored in well-tailored tweeds and wool stockings, their feet sensibly shod against all weather. Only touch of blight: the slowness of British males to notice the change. Snapped one young belle: "It's a pity that the improvement needs to be drawn to their attention through the columns of the Times."

Massive Uplift. Britain has always had its share of great beauties, who perhaps by their very rarity moved poets to rhapsodies and courtiers to either folly or matrimony. Endowed with broad brow, straight nose (admired by Englishmen in both their hounds and their women) and what 17th Century Poet Robert Herrick termed a "swan straining, faire, rare stately neck," isolated beauties from Charles II's Nell Gwyn to Lady Hamilton have shared with Edwardian Actress Lily Langtry the brow, the neck, a mass of lovely hair, and skin like an English rose.

But beauty was long considered a privilege of the upper classes, to be observed chiefly in the form of ball-gowned aristocrats gliding serenely through the pages of the Tatler and Queen. The British girl of average station wore cotton stockings and shapeless dresses, had the general air of somebody who couldn't care less--and couldn't afford it if she did. Misty climate produced the famed peaches-and-cream complexion. But for a poorly fed city girl, the result was merely chapped skin. The working girl, raised on a poor diet and less dentistry, aged early and not well.

The transformation came with the slow growth of British prosperity since 1950. With their new affluence, British girls suddenly became aware that the graceful clothes that once went only with gracious living had come within their reach. With new money to spend, they flocked to Europe, saw French and Italian girls making the most of fewer assets. Today, the average English girl ranks among the best-coifed, best-dressed women on earth.

Competing for the new market, dress manufacturers have adapted dresses designed by smart French and Italian couturiers and put them into mass production at off-the-peg prices ($35 for a suit, $9 for a dress). Glossy women's magazines filled with how-to-do-it beauty articles have proliferated and prospered. Any hairdresser styling himself "Rene of Paris" or "Andre of Mayfair" does a roaring business.

British men have long insisted that what God and good breeding stock bestow, women had best leave alone.* At long last, British women discovered that they knew better, suddenly recognized what a difference a little lipstick can make. To meet the booming demand for cosmetics, U.S. companies such as Helena Rubinstein, Elizabeth Arden and Revlon have moved in alongside such traditional powder-and-scent houses as Atkinson, Goya and Yardley to take aim on a $300 million-a-year business. Although one-quarter of British women still use neither powder nor lipstick, eye shadow sales have jumped 36% in the past year; deodorants are up 7%. Today, the average Englishwoman spends $8 annually on cosmetics. The British teen-ager was traditionally a purposefully plain miss, encased in wool-jumper uniform topped by a straw boater, who was supposed to be interested only in her pony. Now she starts powdering at 14, spends $20 a year on cosmetics.

Southern Exposure. The aristocracy still produces its rare blooms, such as Henrietta Tiarks, 1957's Debutante of the Year, and young Lady Beatty. But except for the consistently smart Duchess of Kent and the occasional piquancy of Princess Margaret, the royal family itself is too safe and sane to serve as popular fashion plates for Britain's enterprising young women. Instead they have turned to film stars. First, notes the British Harper's Bazaar, there were "the ubiquitous and slightly blurred carbons of Elizabeth Taylor ... Since then, passing through the [Audrey] Hepburn phase, we are now being subjected to miniature Bardots." Most favored place in the sun, where thousands of newly affluent working girls now spend their vacations, is Italy. Hand in hand with the vogue for espresso bars has come the Italian look, with stiletto heels for town, tapered trousers for jaunts by Jaguar to Thames-side pubs.

Abroad, British beauties, trim of limb, firm of bosom and svelte of hip, have long been in demand -- Paris' Folies-Bergere has padded out its chorus with a dozen British imports. As one chauvinistic British lady editor argued: "The Swedes are too pallid, the Spanish girls have long, forbidding noses, and Americans have bread-crumb skins." At home, too, British figures are now coming out from under wraps, as bathing suits, including bikinis, are happily adopted as something to be seen in out of the water.

The exposure may prove to British males what French impresarios have long known: there has never been anything wrong with the basic British face and figure, only with its proper display.

*In 1770 a bill was introduced into Parliament (but mercifully unpassed) that provided: "All women of whatever rank, profession or degree, whether virgins, maids or widows, that impose upon, seduce and betray into matrimony any of His Majesty's subjects by scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wood (rouge), iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes and bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law now in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanors."

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