FASHION NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 188, 9 August 1924, Page 22

FASHION NOTES.

(By AN EXPERT.

PARIS, April 23,

Spring is in Paris, not only in the milliners' showrooms, heaped with bright artificial flowers, but also in the parks and avenues where trees are budding, and the beds are gay with coloured daisies and polyanthus. The Champs Elysees can boast rhododendrons bursting into rose-coloured blooms, privet full of young leaf and bud, but the city gardeners are hard at work bedding out in the Tuilleries and Luxembourg. The lilac is in flower, and fragrant as ever. In white, in mauve and purple, the tall branches of these delicious blossoms are to be seen, queen-like in the Paris market, nodding above the marigolds, the pansies, • the anemones, the dallodils, the mimosa, with nonchalant grace. Every car returning to the city on Sunday evening bore great masses of fragrance. Every mud-splashed and dusty cycliet beamed above the nosegay bound to his handle-bars. Paris is one glorious riot of colour: brilliant flowers everywhere, pretty people almost everywhere, lovely children in their gaudy coats, apple-green or turquoise blue, magenta or yellow, and pretty things to buy on all sides. It is distracting, delightful, expensive and new. One never remembers how lovely spring really is, with its winsome bursts of sunshine, with its many rainbows, with its budding trees.

Coloured foulards and scarves are still giving us a slightly exotic appearance this season, do the necklaces made of stones, such as pink, white and green, quartz, and red coral beads, which, when combined with black onyx and diamonds, make excellent necklaces, earrings, sautoirs and other ornaments. In addition to their little Japanese parasols, and small sunshades, With thick handles covered with plain and printed chiffon, crepe, tulle, lace or organdie, women will have Ion;; walking sticks with sjulf handles, which, com. bined with th*»ir short skirt-; and short hair, will tend to give them a slhhtly masculine nppearamc. In spite of the vogue for colour, and mure e-peciahy the voKiie for p.aids and tomato red, l'arisienties stick to black with fanatical I tenacity. Lβ imir est toujours liabhle, as Aunt Cloe used lo say. And a black crepe de chine dress for evening wear, made like a little sleeveless nightie, is perfect in its untrimined simplicity. I This dress is rather short, according to the latest dictates of l.a Mode. It is held at the waist with a double sash, e'est a dire, one sash is tied on the right hip, the other on the left, with a sort of little lopsided onehigher-than-the-other effect. Only, tlie sash lias a liow on the other hip, too, the decollet&ge behind being rather low, and the front rather high. The edge t.f the dccolletagc is finished with a single row of dead-white pearls. This dress is excessively simple, and, at the f ame time, particularly chic. Some women prefer there very simple gowns to the exotic splendour of the draped gowns of shining tissues. With these simple "owns, whether it be a bewitchingly demure one. of the crino-line-talTetas-skirted variety, or the simple crepe de chine, one just alluded I to, it id the fashion to wield the tiniest of fans, and to wear a rose behind the ear. The most correct completion to these toilettes, by the way, is one of the little grenadine slioul.ler shawls—in filmy black, perhaps with several blended colours in the bordering, or in pale amber and gold. The very latest, and also the largest, fan has its dosen or so Ion?, brilliantlycoloured ostrich feathers arranged in just three outward curving groups against a background of gold or silver lace, the effect, when closed, being that of an ordinary all-feather fan, so that when the opening reveals the surprised contrast of the "shining lace, you can always be sure of attracting a good deal of most satisfying attention. Very charming, too, is another new fan, which on one side is all a softness of pastel-coloured goose feathers, while on the other each little feather is tipped with gold or silver. They really look lovely in either pale amber or deep orange or flame, softest liiy-leaf green, 1 and the aforesaid pastel shadings. The black an<l white craze that turned all the race meetings last year into huge games of dominccn is this year replaced by black and red. There is a great fondness fur bright-hued coats and capes over black frocks of every description. At the last meeting at Longchampa, Jeanne d'Anjou appeared in a duck of a coat in tomato red duvetyn, embroidered in thick black ' wool, which she wore with a blar k satin "Marquis," so charmingly over her ; shingled, fair hair —and a black maro- ' cain frock soutached with red. Vermillion red coats are excessively attractive, too, and as for the coat frocks and tailleurs in Scotch plaids, tartans ! and checks, they would certainly cause the death of any confiding chameleon. All these costumee were enchanting, and so were the short skirta, naturally only when ankles were slim! Our Sketch. i This coat of black satin is lined with banana crepe de chine, and trimmed in bands of banana satin, witis black