FASHION NOTES

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 234, 2 October 1937, Page 3 (Supplement)

FASHION NOTES

All Sleeves Go Haywire. (By A PARIS EXPERT.) A GREAT English buyer has just arrived in Paris and I met her at the Exhibition the other day, in the midst of the fashion showings. "The fashions this season have been the most beautiful pageant I ever saw," she said. "But when you get down to buying clothes to take homo, the clothes that follow the lines of the body like glue— the ones with nothing sticking out anywhere, except sleeves and long flowing draperies—are the ones that will make the new styles and the ones I buy.

"Paris emphatically leads in style," Faid this lady, who speaks from a long career as a customer, and a short one as a store administrator. "No one beats the French for dress ideas, big and small." She sunimed it up in "It's the way they tie a bow. Even at that little job the French score."

As to these modes, dresses and coats are in the slimmest of stream linee, with flraporv making' a sculptured effect, or the silhouette is draped a lot, but so closely to the body as to make a good figure and a better corset imperative. Some of the new dresses are poured on from the shoulders, others are streamlined down to ultra-modern slenderness. And so on.

Collars are still se<>n very close around the throat and high, either on the coat or on the dres#s. or both. Sleeves are likely to go haywire, and some big ones begin at the sides of the neckline. Others flow away like angel sleeves, others are gathered, others are leg-o'-mntton, and some are just simply sleeves. Simplicity is the kevnote of *11 the dreeses, while colours are on pastel linos. Sashes are interesting notes in many of the evening gowns, while afternoon dresses have rather shorter skirts, and day ones are inclined to be much shorter. In the Pink. If anyone asked Dame Fashion how her garden grew she could truthfully answer, "It's in the pink." For this colour certainly has a hold upon the mode. Pink is to be the dominant hue this year and we shall see it right down to January, 1938. I could have told you this much as early as the middle of last spring. It will not, of course, be known as pink. Even such variations of the colour as .shell. s"hrimp, salmon and coral, are no longer the last whisper; summer twilight. Ophelie, winter dawn, pomegranate are the latest shades of pink from which London and New York jiave this year chosen their new frocks.

Earlier in the season cyclamen pink was much seen. Everybody wanted and everybody wore a cyclamen dress with hat en suite. Now it is even the most flattering shade of hois de rose. Boie de rose is a lovely colour, the colour of faded blotting paper. Entire ensembles and hats in thin soft shade are numbered among the successes of the season, while the use of pink as trimming is a penchant of more than one couturier. A man couturier shows a charming afternoon dress of peach, with a vest of pale pink, a combination not without subtle flatteries. Next winter we shall wear coats in kashadrap. in velour de laine, in cloth, in lovely shades of bois de rose, and trimmed with some light-coloured fur and topped perhaps with a smart, tight-fitting toque of velvet of the same colour.

Paris Hat Talk. The men go on exerting their power over our hats. There are no signs of giving up Homburgs, Highlander caps, slouch hats with pinched crowns and nonchalant brims and the impudent "sailors" of the "Queen's Navce." Even from Chinese pirates anil Manchurian priests we arc borrowing hats—the four-cornered Manchurian or Russian cap, embroidered in ivhite, being the last steal.

There are a series of new bats with rolled brims and great crown interest. One is like a round pyramid, another its. twisted into a peak, a third is made of lattice work. One of the newest millinery successes is a heart-shaped beret in taffeta, in moire or in felt, embroidered in white. If the hat is black, bright feathers, bright flowers, flowers made of feathers or ribbons not only add gaiety, but height. Sometimes feathers are thrust straight up at the back or backward from under the brim. And you see flowers creeping up the crown or occurring above an ear. The more unexpected their position tka better. Another type of trimming gives a gay silhouette and makes you think of all the carefree, exciting things— flights of birds, flapping of wings, splashes of flowers and fireworks. A bright green wing is perched on the edge of a cap, the bold line of one of the new high toques, is accentuated by a bird poised on one side, and a bonnet is seen flanked by two sequin birds in full flight.

And veils—more of them than ever, fluttering from the top of the face, worn at one side, at the other, in a little hunch right in the front of the toque, or falling gracefully down the back—we don't seem to be able to get away from veils. What Can't Be Cured Must Be Endured. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, "What can't be cured may he endured with infinite grace." I speak of height extremes particularly, because I hear more complaints on this score than on any other, and perhaps because height is the least susceptible to change, except for the artifices of heels and hairdress, lines of dress, and lines of hats. However, as things stand to-day, the artifices are not the court of last resort. What matters is the state of mind towards one's height, be it diminutive or be it extremely tall. It is from these two classes that we hear so often regrets concerning height.

But there is a place in the sun for the tiny ones, and an equally important place for the tall ones; and envied places indeed are the goals to which some of each extreme have arrived. But not through worrying about one's height— through capitalising it, rather.

I think it may be said that there is an infinitely better chance of success and beauty acclaim to be found in capitalising one's height, tall or short, than in trying to destroy or camouflage it with the old-time artifices which, in the case of a tall girl at least, often result in bunched shoulders and a hideous inferiority complex. It is not to-day's rule, you tall ones. Your height may be converted into your greatest asset. But first you must think of it as an asset, not as a blight cast upon you by an unkind fate.