FASHION NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 192, 15 August 1925, Page 26

FASHION NOTES.

(By AN EXPERT.)

PARIS, April 20.

For evening wear, one is amazed, write* our Paris correspondent, at the gorgeous clothes that women are wearing. They look like princesses strayed from fairyland. Wonderful brocades, gleaming metal tissues, ehot silks, velvets that fall like satin, and are as fine and soft as muslin. Slim dresses are the order of the day, and there is very little drapery. Evening coats are marvellous, too. One, I have seen, is in brown satin, and lined with Ventian red mousseline. And another, is a Chinese coat of gold oloth lined with cyclamen mousseline, worn over a gold lace dress, with an underskirt of the same soft cyclamen shade. With all its golden glitter, this dress is simple enough for a girl who is going to a really big party. These little dresses, gorgeous though they sound, can be made up by any girl with a little taste and a little money; and she can wear it for two seasons instead of one, can walk in silver or gold, and look like a princess, or better still, a mannequin from the Rue de la Paix.

Every woman know how, on brilliant mornings, when the sun searches out all the weak spots in our sartorial armoury, our tailor garments are apt to look dusty and distasteful, and we are seized with an irrepressible longing to make a bonfire of them all, and array ourselves in fresh and dainty piquea, cottons and voiles, the very names of which are attractive. A rapid review of our wardrobe quickly leads to the conviction that, come what may, we must begin the year well, and provide ourselves with a stock of summery materials in which we can enjoy the sunny summer days in the pleasing certitude that our clothes match their joyous mood. We begin to have visions of ourselves in trim cotton frocks, smart pique suits, and later, in flowered muslins and voiles, ready for the revels of midsummer.

The best laid plans for May and June, will, of course, include some tailor-suits of the new coloured piques, in soft pastel shades. Time wa3, when pique was only made in white, in which it was the inalienable material for tennis skirts, but fashions and the unkind ways of laundresses have changed all that, and the immemorial white has yielded to colours, which may now be produced in fast dyes. The stuff for the new summer frocks are mostly crepy, and light as thistle-down. There is, as usual, a determined effort to revive foulard, which will fail, aa it usually does. Foulard was all very well when it was the only pebble on the beach, before people had invented the charming things which we wear today. One rang the changes from hot serge to informal pique, by way of accomodating foulard. But foulard had no virtue to recommend it. It was stuffy on hot days, and chilly on cool ones. Its great point was to be right for those betwixt-and-between days which usually make up our European summer. But we have changed all that. We have not a climate any more, we have a succession of heat waves and cold snaps, and change from gabardine coats to cotton airiness numberless times weekly. No one could call life dull nowadays. You never know how to pack your week-end trunk.

With the limited skirt acreage has oome a tremendous fancy for the most elaborate stockings and footgear. The short French vamp is much to the fore for street and day wear, and is to be seen In suede, patent leather and kid. A friend of mine was exploiting a pair of kid shoes the other day, which had one strap about the ankle and several over the instep. "One hundred and seventyfive francs," she remarked, and, with a sigh, she added, "Oh, well, I was tired of my car, anyway." That it is a question of oome such alternative, is found in the prices affixed to all the shoes and stockings, and sometimes, although the cut may look perfect, some of these new shoes just fit. As a matter of fact, an expensive pair I was wearing on the wrong side of a perfect at the Salon the other day, gave mc a perfect fit after I had walked round half-an-hour, and I went home in rather a hurry. Very elaborate are the evening shoes. Gold and silver slippers, for example, frequently exploit jewelled buckles. You •may even trim your evening shoes with lace or with ostrich feather tips if you feel so inclined.

Equally sumptuous are the stockings over which the skirt curtain raises. For wear with black kid or black leather pumps, we have exquisite stockings of black silk, which are either embroidered or inset with web-like lace. As to tho short-vamp shoe, it has almost necessitated a new kind of stocking. At all events, you find the hose designed for these often embroidered low down on the instep. And then, too, we have some favoured models, among which, of course, one locates the Egyptian type. As if the gamut in styles in handkerchiefs had not been run, there are now very smart mouchoirs in pongee, with hems of white linens, one and a-half inches wide, and in reverse order there are white linen lawn handkerchiefs with hems of pongee. Our Sketch. The illustration is of taffetas in a soft cyclamen shade, with embroideries