Looking Back

From the Sunday Times 50 years ago

MADAME Carven, the French dress designer who arrived in Johannesburg this week for a ten-day tour of South Africa with her collection, told me yesterday that “too many maladjusted men are designing women’s clothes”.

“These men hate women and like to humiliate them,” she said. “To satisfy some peculiar inner urge they design clothes which make women look ridiculous, and then make fun of them.”

She thought women should only wear clothes designed for them by women, and by “normal” men.

Mme. Carven said mini-skirts were “about as unfeminine as one could get”. — April 30 1967

From the Sunday Times 25 years ago

PLAYBOY tycoon Donald Trump is suing ex-wife Ivana for the return of R60-million — because, he says, she has revealed their secrets in a steamy novel. Ivana, 43, was banned from writing kiss-and-tell memoirs in return for the multimilliondollar divorce settlement. But the hotel and casino boss claims her bestseller, Foxes Love Alone, is a virtual mirror image of his life with Ivana, whom he dumped for new lover Marla Maples, 27. But he is even angrier about the book’s sex scenes. In one, fictional millionaire Adam Graham initiates the book’s heroine, Katrinka, into the Mile High Club. Later Adam seduces her on a mink coat aboard a private yacht. — April 26 1992