The Modern Era

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 189, 12 August 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

The Modern Era

Fashion Notes

GONE are the days when one or two great French dressmakers dictated a fashion. Several nowadays may he of accord about some general feature, but each will have distinct specialities of style. This is the reason why it is so difficult to be dogmatic about modes of the existing era. One can present the best, but how does anyone on earth know which of the different models will appeal in line, colour or material to the fancy of the fashionable? And it is the fashionable —no matter how snobbish one feels in saying so—who sets the fashion! The would-be fashionmaker, particularly in France, Remembers one thing: that no novelty is worth creating simply because it is a novelty. One must have studied with real reverence the beautiful design* of past centuries and become familiar with the meanings of line and colour and ornamentation before it is possible to pit crude productions against the accumulated learning of the artists of other times. They were not ashamed to study, to go from gallery to gallery, adapting the turn of a frilling here, the colour of an embroidery there. They may have dug patiently through the musty archives of old museums to produce the new design that should have its growth from an ancient nobility. Fashions, like food, Bast be properly assimilated, and only

By--A Paris Expert such of them as agree with one's own individuality should be attempted. As to the wearing of flowers, this vogue is not only a« fashionable as it was last season but is still on the crest of the wave. However, for those women whom flowers do not suit, there is every whit as much laxity as in anything else. . One might put a bunch of peonies on the edge of a tulle skirt, and people would probably think it both original and charming. One might take a crinoline dress, a copy of the 'fifties and 'sixties, trim it with flowers among the bouillonnes and be highly commended for one's taste in these matters. For our grandmothers had many ways of using flowers on their ball gowns to match the wreaths in their hair, and they did not ecruple to use them lavishly. Whenever a flounce or bouillonne of tarlatan or tulle was caught up it was usuallv a posy of flowers or a cluster of feathers which was used for the purpose, while under veilings of lace nestled wreaths, tiny circles of flower*, bows of ribbon or feathers. A fashion journal of 1R«1 described how a white silk dres« covered with three skirts of white tulle d'illusion was looped up bundle* of blue-d»isie&,

while the corsage had folds of tulle fastened in the middle and on each shoulder with daisies. Of course, there was a coronet and coiffure of blue daisies to match. Yet another gown had a bertha of net and silk with a large cactus flower placed in the centre and a smaller one on each shoulder. Flowers, always flowers.