“Indecent” Pareu
p. 60 · Read in the full issue
A Quaint Story From London
(From the Sunday Dispatch, London) SOME months ago, the French Minister for the Colonies, Louis Rollin, rescind ed the rule banning pareus in Tahiti.
The development occurred in rather an amusing way.
Recently, the women on the French Riviera have taken to wearing the new beach wear of flowered cotton brassiere, with scanty knee-length wrap-around skirt, copied from the one-piece pareus of the Tahitian girls.
Tahiti was in the boom, and the fashion spread to America. United States manu
facturers started featuring Tahiti pareus, and socially-minded American women at Miami and other social resorts soon fol lowed the fashions of Nice and Cannes.
At the French Ottawa conference, Monsieur Rollin learned with amazement the irony of the situation. For many years the native girls of Tahiti have been for bidden to wear the “indecent” pareu, and have always worn the short-sleeved long cotton dresses. The costumes of the women on the beaches of Cannes, Nice, and Miami could not look much different on Poly nesians, and against the background which they were really made for. In consequence, the rule was rescinded, and the Tahitian girls are now smiling.