Fashionable Freaks.

Auckland Star, Volume XIII, Issue 3704, 24 June 1882, Page 4 (Supplement)

Fashionable Freaks.

Every new caprice^ of fashion brings forth a new industry. Never before was tho commerce of natural flowers so [extensive as it is at this moment. The compulsion to appear at Queen Victoria'sdrawingrooms with none but natural flowers, and tbat these flowers' should be assorted to the dress, has created an immense demand for blossoms of the testhotic colours in vogne used for the patterns of the satins and velvets worn by the world of fashion. YcUow is your only wear,' and the .modest and homely daffodils are carried away in such quantities from Covent Garden Market tbat they had become for a few hours on absolute rarity. Large hunches of daffodils are carried in the band; a knot of daffodils, with the blossom turned down, ward, ii worn on the shoulder; n single daffodil is worn in the hair; and at the last Drawing-room the rustic flower studded the front of many of the white satin petticoats seen with the court trains of moss green velvet. It is quite a novel sight for the early visitor to Covent Garden to be- , hold the numbers of well-looking clerks and

milliners' commission agents rushingaboufc in all haste, bolding 'twixt linger and thumb a collection of flutteiing specimens of silk or satin of various colours, some of them mixed in apparent confusion, which the wearers are seeking to match in flowers of the same hue. If not absolutely of the same shade of colour, they must necessarily be of tlie same harmonious tint, and tbus we behold the strangest combination borne forth from the market. Daffodils, with the green mildew mos«, yellow marsh mangold with the little drab coloured mushroom.dark green fern with dark blue hyacinthe and so on. This fancy of assortment of colour i 3 carried even far enough to govern the wearing of jewels, for the. dull-coloured gems, such as aqua marina, and the olive green perodean, are at the present moment in great request. And thus, although by royal injunction courteously conveyed, tha aesthetic form in dro'S has been avoided,the aesthetic colour has been preserved by the influence which seems to pervade all things at this moment.— Court Journal.