Fashion: The Shift

Trend setters in search of trends to set have a tough time of it with women’s fashions. Sometimes the group will goalong with the gag (pale, pale lipstick), sometimes not (the trapeze line). A marvelously effective trend often consists simply in reviving something old and already a proven success—like the one-piece tank suit. But best of all is the trend that never quite was a trend, the standby dress that has hung there in the back of the closet for years, always ready to be pulled out and made a fad of. This year, finally, the longtime understudy has turned star: the shift dress, normally relegated to the last-resort department, has grabbed the fashion spotlight to become a full-fledged Trend.

Hardly daring in design, the shift is nothing more than an easy-fitting sheath, comes either with sleeves or without, street-length or to the floor. It has a plain neck, and if it has sleeves, it has two of them. Although it comes in all materials, it is most popular in wool and most effective in jersey variants, which do what the sack was not permitted to do—cling.

Society leaders are wearing shifts right along with college girls, saleswomen, beatniks and models. In this fashion year, when the final accolade of “understatement” has been bestowed on everything from peignoirs to periwigs, the shift genuinely understates the understatement. It has, in fact, been criticized on those very grounds. Complained New York Mirror Columnist Suzy: “Too many of them look like loving hands at home sewed two lengths of cloth together, cut out a couple of little holes for the arms, a medium-sized one for the head and a big one for two legs to stick out of.” Nothing quite so simple swivels heads in the streets; nor is the straight shift likely to turn strong men helpless after one swift glance. But to the thousands of American women who are just not quite ready yet for chartreuse face powder or the octagon look, the shift is a welcome and comfortable trend to latch on to.