CULT OF BEAUTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1930, Page 4 (Supplement)

CULT OF BEAUTY.

THE NEW COURAGE. OVERCOMING DISABILITY. (By A PARIS BEAUTY SPECIALIST.) The saying that "what cannot be cured must be endured" is as obsolete as Cuspidors. This age is much too clever for resigned endurance. That belongs to the time when women donned lace caps at thirty, and wrote spinster after their name, if they had not acquired one. Why, in those days, someone has said, if a guest felt neglected at a party, she cried and went home, while now she slaps the hostess and stays. Anyway, there's a new courage abroad, and things that once were accepted as a misfortune are now contrived into positive advantages. I am speaking of features, and aver that some of the most amazing pieces of good business I have ever known were the exploiting of Nature's blunders. Thus evolves the maxim: If you have a feature lacking in beauty, either fix it or feature it. What! But, yes J The wisdom of it has been proved time over again. A certain reigning belle in Paris today owes her reputation as a beauty to a hopelessly retrousse© nose. Of course, this could have been fixed, but the young lady's family are strict Hugenots, and would not consent to such an open criticism of Providence. So thisafflicted one, long before her debut, cried her button of a nose as red as fire and immediately afterwards made ■ friends with it, and promised to stand by it to the. last ditch. How she studied this wayward nose, and catered to it! She adopted what she called a retroussee manner and a retroussee kind of dress—impudent, tilting, piquant. She fitted her voice and her hats, her furs and her shoes, her walking and her state of mind, to that tip-tilted nose. And lo! the offending member took rank as a distinctive mark of beauty, an accent in a harmonious picture. The popular owner knew in her heart that she had become a beauty because, not in spite, of her one wilful feature. Another instance of outwitting the common creed anent feminine beauty is that Madame XXX, of a well-known Touraine family, is invariably spoken of as "La Belle Madame XXX." Madame XXX. has a real misfortune, but the town society columns are blind to it. Dazzled by it. The victim of this affliction wears it boldly as a crown— a frown of silver white hair. Thirtytwo years old, and grey! Grey! Grisly! Faded! Easily Madame XXX. could invite these adjectives, instead of that one which has become a sort of first name. Let her but shrink before her affliction, attempt to hide it, dress it apologetically, and the heartless pack would be upon her to rend her to pieces. Why, it can be a veritable crime to be white at thirty-two! And it can be a virtue if one makes it' so. Why doesn't she dye it? Her husband forbids her (some husbands are like that). So (and it serves him right) she flaunts her remarkable tresses before the world; she labours over them until they shimmer with vitality and softness. She has bobbed them, of course, and they look lovely in their sheeny white. She is complacent in the knowledge that she stands up in every gathering, like a rare gem among commonplace stones. Her husband, a bit piqued at the attention shown his wife, never dreams that he has driven her from the backline of the chorus to the centre of the stage. Here is another example: 'A certain countess made capital of a too long neck. Much too long it might have been, except that she paraded it, exaggerated it, made it important, arranged her bobbed hair somewhat high, and cut her gowns low and severe. And there you are. You had to accept that neck, i and you wanted to. The lady kept it smooth and creamy white, and thereafter deigned not to quibble with it. No length-consuming dog collar of pearls, no_ subtlety of tulle-muffled shoulders, just a neck, uncompromising, long, slender. So dainty! So patrician! But if cowardice had ever faltered her, had driven her to trite makeshifts, the same tongues would have murmured: "She can't hide that scraggy neck, try as she may." . A too short neck can be exploited to advantage, too, mais oiii! Some beauties have been blessed with them. Otherwise they would have been cursed with them, the difference lying in their acceptance of their necks, as they found them. Ears and eyes, mouths and chins, when they lack the characteristics that have come to be ideals, can be coaxed from obstinate unfriendliness into valuable allies. A friend of mine has the Bourbon ear—lobeless, pointed as all Bourbon ears should be—but not one lock" of hair is permitted to cover them. Why, even the Hapsburg chin, which adorns that charming person Alphonse XIII., King of Spain, can be a smart appendage, especially where men are concerned. The Louvre is full of Hapsburg chins. You can't imagine how many there are! You see them, and can detect them at a glance as belonging to that family, and that famify alone. I was in the Louvre last Sundav and there, hanging on th;; wall in front of me, encadre in a most beautiful gold frame,- was the living, image of Alphonse A.III. it turned out to be on<> of his ancestors of the year 1560. He was all m black satin and lace, with silk stockings, buckled shoes, and a curly wig. I nearly fell in love with him. Ariel close to him there was another handsome dead and gone personage—none other than King Charles I. of England. His chiselled, features, with clear-cut chin piercing eyes, and tall, well-knit sinewv ngure, stood out clearly on the canvas — by Gainsborough—and his blue satin doublet and liose and long-flowing wi<* added chic, as the dressmakers would sav.