MILLINERY GONE MAD.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 190, 6 May 1908, Page 3

MILLINERY GONE MAD.

, ' Who would ..not- invest his or her little all in the. millinery, business? asks a Paris correspondent'of-, a-'British paper. It seems that the present: fashions in ladies' hats , have brought a prodigious boom in the trade. One milliner, has coined '.'mone? to such an extent since last autumn that on New Year's Day she distributed a sum of £3630 in presents among her; hands. Lucky • milliner who can\ afford this largesse/ and lucky' hands! Her leading employee draws : a modest salary of £2800 a year. The reason of the boom- is the modern woman's need; not only for expensive hats, but for many of them. It appears that almost every hour of. the day calls; for a different' hat. What is worn at a tea party at a private houso will not do for tea in a tea-shop. The hat that suits a . classical picture show would bo hopelessly wrong for an impressionist exhibition. At concerts the millinery depends upon the programme, and there are Claude Debussy hats, as there are Beethoven hats, and Richard Strauss hats, and hats for orchestral' - and hats for chamber music. What happens when' the " Prelude ; a l'Apres-niidi d'un Faune" follows a Beeti hoven symphony on the .programme? The headgear must then make. shapely heads ache. There are also special liats for ; M. Jules Lemaitre's lectures r on Racine, now drawing all Paris, and different'hats'for the different plays about which he lectures. An expert swears that for llacino's one comedy, i "Les Plaideiirs," "choux" ' and "ruches" were the thing, while when M. Lemaitre lectured on the tragedy of "Andromaque,'' ' all the women .with the right taste wore Gainsboroughs. As £10. is said to be* a • common. price . for ono o^these, harmonious • hats/fand £40, is not 'considerei an absurd i figure', the boom in the millinery trado, is ■ explained. .