Henrietta Hay's Column

I am not an authority in the field of fashion. My chief concern in selecting clothing is comfort and I agree with Gilda Radner. "I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch."

Probably that is the reason far out efforts at human adornment leaves me a little bemused. I have wondered now and then whether Eve's fig leaf, while decorative, was all that comfortable. It must have been a little scratchy. Body adornment is usually thought of as a purely female project but that is not true. Surely nothing in the history of the world could have been more miserably uncomfortable than a suit of armor, perhaps the only style tailored by blacksmiths. And those guys didn't even have bullets to duck.

There is danger in fashion. In 1989, according to the National Safety Council, 102,397 people were injured by their clothing and 43,868 were shackled, slashed or impaled by their jewelry.

Earrings can be dangerous. I saw a pair the other day that must have been six inches long and a couple of inches wide. In a high wind a woman wearing them might be carried off to the yellow brick road. I read about a woman wearing long metal earrings on a very hot day who ended up in the emergency room with severe burns on her cheeks. These stories tend to discourage me just as I am getting enough nerve to start wearing dangly earrings again.

Scarves are in style now, but we should all keep in mind the image of Isadora Duncan laughing as she flung her long scarf over her shoulder - only to be strangled by it as it caught in the wheel of her convertible. I have seen very long scarves today, but generally not on people who would run around in sports cars.

Since I usually haul my driver's license and a dollar bill around in a pocket to avoid carrying a purse, I am fascinated by the size of some of the bags women carry. I have never had the nerve to ask any of my friends who carry very large ones what is in them, but too much weight can cause excessive strain on back and shoulder muscles.

Men's neckties, which are related to scarves, can be dangerous, but men wear them anyway to make fashion statements. They can blend with other parts of his clothing, or they can reach out and scream at everyone who passes. I had a friend once whose favorite tie had a big trout on it. To my knowledge he never went fishing. I never did figure out what he was trying to say. Politicians this year are all wearing red ties with wide blue or black diagonal stripes. Those ties announce, "I am running for office and must be prepared if I run into a TV camera." This in itself may be dangerous.

Even the Ride the Rockies has its fashion guidelines. The men and women riding bikes over high Colorado mountain passes are people who don't feel shy about wearing skin-tight pants in public. The basic outfit is black stretch shorts with the official tour jersey, which is blue, purple, orange, pink, black, white and neon green. The color scheme protects them from the motorists with whom they are sharing the highway. I would suspect that the major danger from this costume would be finding the strength to peel off the shorts after pedaling up two mountain passes in one day.

The style in bathing suits is perhaps the most dangerous of all. Will Rogers said that, "I never expected to see the day when girls get sunburned in the places they do now." Since he wrote that sometime before his death in 1935 he wasn't talking about very much sunburn. He would probably like today's styles. Fortunately for the future of the race, somebody invented sunscreen.

Emergency rooms have had to deal with disengaging embarrassed gentlemen from their zippers and with partially clothed ladies who have thrown their backs out trying on bathing suits in tiny dressing rooms. Through the years all sorts of physical damage has been done to the human body by corsets and girdles and male bikinis.

There are dangers in wearing clothes, but perhaps the risks of going without are greater. Either the neighbors or the sun will get you. Anyway, clothes have made the fashion statement for us since Adam and Eve and I am sure we will continue to take our chances.