FASHION NOTES.

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

FASHION NOTES.

• SPRING ON THE WAY. draped coats for evening. (By A PARISIAN EXPERT.) The big Paris stores have staged such a welcome to Spring as makes every woman in front of those tempting windows stop and make swift mental calculations. Sports suits, in all the latest modes and in every fashionable shade, and gay little frocks to be worn beneatu straight coats in black and in brownbrown, as you know, is the colour—flaunt themselves before her eyes. Each window has something to attract her. Here is one full of lengths of bright, delivately printed silk, upheld by an absurd gilded modern ngure, which seems merely a series of curves; there is another filled with shoes for Spring absurd things with slender straps and high heels; and a third has such a wonderful display of hats that all her doubts disappear at once. No wonder her husband, standing silently by, feels a little gloomy as he watches her absorbed face, andprobably wishes that the artists who dress these windows were not quite so efficient. Chic is a State" of Mind. Eternal, vigilance is the- price of fashion, and you're supposed to be just as smart within four walls, with nobody looking, as you are out in the highways and byways of Paris. Chic is a state of mind, quite as much as a -state of • appearance, says Paris, and.you cant indulge in the secret vice of looking slipshod without a lowering of. the dress moral all along the clothes line. Many a woman needs no more than two, or at most three, kinds of evening clothes for all the places she goes, and all the people she sees after nightfall. Others need thirty, and they are the ones for whom the whole gamut of evening fashions is personally and expressly created. While the fashion idea is the same for all divisions of the evening mode, practically everything else is variable. There are more than three smart skirtlengths for the spring evening gown. The materials used for making up a home evening model, a restaurant evening ensemble, and an evening gown for the opera or ball, are totally unlike one another. This diversity applies also to decollete trimmings and fittings. Evening Coats and Materials. Very fitted evening dresses are worn for dancing and for formal occasions. Waistlines are marked in all but the grandest and most formal evening dresses. Tailored evening coats are the smartest for evenings out, without a man playiifg the accompanist. Short draped coats and capes are worn by particular women when they go dancing and to the theatre with men. Gorgeous trailing evening wraps are worn for the grande soiree. Taffetas, faille, moire and stiff satin are the most fashionable materials for tailored evening ensembles. Moire and j satin are much more formal than taffetas and faille, and when moire is woven with metal threads it is one of the most formal of evening materials. Georgette and other transparent crepes are better for simple evenings than chiffon and crepe. All of the materials are chic for spring evening gowns. Net and tulle are largely reserved by Paris for dancing frocks. Lame, with its glitter, is naturally very elegant, and cannot be appropriate in simple settings. Marquisette and crepe satin and print silks are a trio that step from one evening category to another, depending on lines and details. The Year of Grace, 1930. The year of grace, 1930, will probably go down in fashion history as the year when the suit came back. And what a welcome guest it is! The suit is truly all things to all women. It is a type of costume which the Englishwoman wears superlatively well, the business woman welcomes it, and the woman of many social engagements finds the suit equally acceptable. As for the woman with whom clothes economy is a necessity, the suit is a veritable godsend, for several blouses of different types, with a wellcut suit on conservative lines, will take the place of half a dozen costumes. Skirt lengths are still a popular subject of conversation in Paris. Everyone likes the long evening gowns, though some people find them difficult to walk in, not to mention dancing. But there is diversity of opinion about the long afternoon skirts, on account of the coat problem. A three-quarter coat looks well with an ankle-length skirt, but a coat of the length of last year, with a foot of skirt dangling below it, looks abominable, in my opinion. A long end or so here and there is far less objectionable. In the house, without a coat, the new long afternoon gown looks charming, dignified and womanly. The dressmakers, as a matter of fact, have shortened the waist and raised the belts somewhat. Sports and street things remain short and trim, and are often belted at the top of the hip. Our Sketch. The illustration is made in dark blue crepe de chine, trimmed in bands of inset beige crepe de chine, and is topped by a long coat of the same material, with a scarf to match.