FASHION NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 4 (Supplement)

FASHION NOTES.

SKIMPY SKIRT DOOMED. NEWEST MILUNERY. (By A PARISIAN EXPERT.) For one brilliant month, Deauville is a fashionable whirlpool of feverish gaiety and strenuous pleasure, with 21 meetings at the racecourse, international tennis champiouship, polo and golf challenge cups, pigeon shooting, and, of course, the Casino, which is Deauville. Then, when September is oyer, the shutters are put up in the hotels and shops, and the town' of a thousand delights takes a long sleep until another season brings new fashions and new thrills. The flare this season at Deauville is not sea' bathing, but sun bathing. Two things are essential for enjoyable sunbathing—a perfect figure and a sublime composure. She —it is usually a she —gets wetted by sea water up to the neck, then, discarding ' wrap and almost everything else, spread-eagles in the full glare of the sun. When one side is done to a turn, she rolls over until the other side is nicely browned. White skins are very unfashionable at Deauville, where the favourite colour seems to be a sort of restrained coffee that goes well with a ukulele.

Blistering for beauty must be a painful process; but these sun maidens appear to enjoy being parboiled and semiroasted. The blondes really suffer martyrdoms, for their sensitive skins are scorched until they resemble not a chocolate eclair, but an underdone entrecote. The brunettes, however, brown beautifully, and with their geranium Jips, dark hair, flashing teeth and black eyebrows, they approach in costumes and complexion the dusky belles of the South Seas. Three jolly hours are spent on the white soft sands dotted with pretty bathing suits spread like confetti aloug the shore. Here and there the flash of a mirror betrays a reclining beauty busy with lipstick and eyebrow pencil. Professional beauties? Qui sait? But whether it be professional or amateur, certainly it is beauty.

Dressmakers' Paradise. When good dressmakers die they go to Deauville, where fashions are born in the strange way that fashions are born. Writing as a fashion woman writer, though unworthy to touch the hem of, an inspired gown, I can say from, curious, if \ profane observation, that for evening dress, the short skimpy skirt isdopHed. So also are doomed unecessary drips and of fabric and other "fallals"; which make women look so- painfully grotesque, Fashionable women..will .have non,e .of them, But, on the other hand, they are breaking out into panniers-r-not real panniers, but the sort of thing that billows out from the hips —you-know what I mean. And they are still displaying their silky

knees, their shapely, calves. But at the back these short skirts fall into wispy trains, making some women look like beautiful peacocks sunning themselves under the electric lights., For peacock trains, mind you, are only for # e veiling wear. And in the new fashions' waists are at the normal, unless women are too plump to allow of this beautiful fashion. What is the Secret? What is the secret of the becoming millinery that is being worn this season? For the new hats are growing unusually kind to their wearers. One of the chief reasons why the new models are so attractive is that they are practically moulded to the shape of the head. The hat-line—with or without the brim—is studied from every angle, and the back view and the profile effect are considered just as carefully from an artistic point of view as the front of the hat. These new hats become their wearers from every point of view. Autumn millinery is not always so prone to take on the youthful and becoming air that it does this season. Felt, velours, taupe, however, are used in a new way with a skill which bring them into line with the present-day age of youth. Colours, too, have their charm, and the new beige shades, the new tomato reds, the luscious peach tints, and the autumn browns and greens are all delightful, and prove another youthful and becoming factor in the millinery of the moment. The close-fitting beret will be one of the most popular millinery modes this autumn. Then the ear-cap, as it is called. In some models the droop is at oue side only; in others, the tiny bonnet brim is cut into points. These little close-fitting hats are charming for youth, and bestow a softening line of beauty-to the older woman, if carefully ciio.sen as regards colour and line.