DRESS AND FASHION NOTES.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9323, 25 January 1896, Page 3

DRESS AND FASHION NOTES.

*■ " Weekly Press and Referee." LONDON AND PARISIAN. The quaint touches and little eccentricities of fashion are often its prettiest and most tempting features, and they nearly always help to smooth the difiicult paths of dress renovations and alterations, although they demand a great deal of judgment in their selection. It is easy enough to plan a costume when we are content with a simple cut and a useful neutral tinted material, but it is quite another matter when a short length of material has to be eked out with something else, and such momentous questions as choice of colour, of style, or the acceptance or rejection of some fascinating novelty have to be decided. Amongst the most popular of these makeshift fashions is that of having the sleeves of a different material from the bodice, and considering the enormous proportions that sleeves have attained, this is no slight matter, for no ordinary dress length will provide fabric enough for a wide skirt and wide sleeA'es. Mpst of us are still rejoicing in the acquisition of bargains in dres3 lengths, and wondering how, with the present spreading tendency of fashion, five yards are to be made to do duty for six or seven. Cutting the dress to suit the cloth usually ends in spoiling the dress, and it is really wiser, and in the end more economical, not to compromise with the impossible, but to admit it, and lay out the few shillings more that, wisely spent, will give us a really useful and well-looking dress. As to the fashion of different sleeves, it is as often abopted for new as ior half-worn dresses; even wedding gowns of white satin are turned out with huge puffed sleeves of white velvet, and great bows of the velvet, mixed with orange blossom, are placed on the skirt. In these combination costumes the harmonies produced by two shades of one colour are more fashionable and in better taste than contrasts of colour; thus supposing the dress to be of mauve silk, the sleeves would be of violet velvet; shades of green are combined in the same way, and gowns made of silk or woollen in the soft, pale shades of willow, reed, grasshopper, lizard or poplar green, are finished off with sleeves of emerald green velvet or liberty silk. Bronze velvet makes a delightful harmony with beige cloth or silk, and dark blue with pale grey blue, for day dresses; for evening toilettes sharper contrasts are permitted, but only light colours being employed there is nothing very startling in the combinations.