FASHION NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 189, 12 August 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

FASHION NOTES.

THE GREAT IDEA

A GRACEFUL LINE.

(By A PARIS EXPERT.)

The great idea this season is to look tall and graceful. To do this, keep your coiffuro small, for the smaller your head the taller you will appear. The whole height of a well-proportioned person should be, it is said, eight times the length of his or her head. Contrariwise, a too tall woman may make herself look shorter by adopting a bouffant style of hair-drcssing.

While the skirts have definitely decided to be shorter for day wear and long for evening, skirt and waistline aro changing quantities, depending upon their interrelationship to fix their exact level. It's a question of architectural proportion. A normal waistline may look absurdly high on a tall woman. Tho thing is to preserve the beautifully long-limbed effect in relation to the space above the belt.

To settle the sartorial boundaries once more, I advise you to go into a tete-a-tete with your glass, taking a tape measure with you. Then divide your silhouette into four parts. Put <sne quarter above your belt and you get your ideal waistline. Generally speaking, for evening you give tho remaining three-quarters to your skirt, and for sports half, leaving the remaining quarter for your legs, which in plain dress language means that your evening skirt must fall to the ankles, tho instep, or the floor. Your sports and daytime hem will stop from fourteen to fifteen inches from the floor, your formal afternoon lengths will vary between the two extremes. Uneven hems have disappeared, and as for trains, we can cxpect to see them worn only in the interior or in the movies. The Distinction of Tailored Clothes. There are times when nothing looks so smart as a well-cut tailor-made, whether it be a two-piece suit or one of the attractive one-piece coat-frocks which aro so delightful for spring wear. Paris couturiers are showing some decidedly interesting models in their collections. The lines are pure and simple, devoid of any elaboration which would detract from the true idea of the tailored costume. Yet most of these models have a strikingly new and individual charm of their own. Inverted pleats are evident in many cases, and there is a new skirt with a most slender line, slit up each side seam for about eight inches, _ to allow freedom of movement for walking. Street clothes are remarkable for their simplicity, and many of them are along marine lines. Jacket buttonings especially are fashioned after navy clothes, and even such decorative details as aiguillettes are used to brighten up a sombre suit or coat. Mannish suits, perfectly tailored and beltless, with pinclied-in waists and narrow skirts, are seen made of men's shirting materials, navy and white pin-stripes aifd of a heavy, dully printed crepe. Flashy print scarves or blouses are worn, and the effect detracts from the severity of the suit-lines. Dainty blouses, with rows and rows of narrow lace, aro used for the purpose of Relieving the hard lines of tailored clothes. Widened shoulder effects are not seen so much, but epaulettes and capelets are still to the fore. Spring and Summer Hats. The new hats are tricky, but the milliners appear at last to want to make them becoming. The spring and summer hats are going to be a grand and glorious achievement; they arc works of art; they look as though they just grew; but they have a sophistication that affirms artifice. Soft flattering brims, and flowers and feathers, will enable you to look in the glass without that shudder of

horror most of us felt under th-e winter's pancakes and liigli-behind toques that passed as chic. Cock and ostrich feathers trim hats, and some of theSe have important looking crowns and are no longer flat and small. The ''capelines," i.e., the brim hats that most of the Paris mil--liners are featuring, are in for a summer visit. The brims are so original, they arc full of kinks and crochets, however large they be, and although the limit seems to be the cart wheel, they never hide the face. They are always cleverly tilted up, so as to form an arbour, as it were, beneath which the face glows with mysterious attraction, or they have a dashing cavalier slant, with one side rolled or tilted up and the other descending to form a background for a clear-cut profile. Crowns arc generally a wee bit higher; they are shallow, with a faint tendency towards squareness. Sometimes the newest hats have the dear little dish crowns of ISGO. The tiling is that low crowns are feminine, and, above all, youthful. High crowns certainly age a woman; tlicy add a year (to be polite) to every inch. For spring wear light chiffon /cits, chiefly in bright colours, are well to the fore. Straws are also seen in great numbers and are trimmed in velvet or faille ribbons, or with a littlo flower perched well at the back or on the summit of the crown.