MODES OF THE MOMENT

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 286, 29 August 1931, Page 16

MODES OF THE MOMENT

Passing Notes by Jane Wellington, August 28. Dear Isabel,—I said I would tell you of summer dresses, didn’t I? I meant the nice little silks and cottons, the linens and tobralcos and zephyrs that spell sunshine and warm breezes, yellow sands and dancing waves. Just to look at them makes your heart dance with the anticipation of cheerful days ahead, and as soon as a settled day arrives we shall see a general discarding of furs and tweed coats and woollies in favour of these new and alluring garments. Wellington streets will look as if a gold rush had been announced to take place at the Rainbow’s End. There will still be tailored suits, of course. In the city that is inevitable, all-the-year-round wear for many women. Top coats, too, but they will be light and gaily coloured. But the new straight sleeveless dress with its own coatee, either matching or in a strong contrast, is only waiting the first opportunity to show Itself. As a challenge to Providence it will even appear without its coat. One morning soon a bold tasS, scorning the possibility of pneumonia or bronchitis, braving the touch of the south in the breeze (“and the mother at home says Hark! For her voice, I listen and yearn!”) will sally forth in a dear little frock of primrose linen, patterned with a tiny outline flower in black, made with a frilled cape-collar cut in epaulette fashion, which covers just the tops of her bare young arms. With it she will wear a delightful broadbrimmed hat of black and white, in one of the new shiny straws. She will carry a green leather bag, probably, and wear long leather gloves to match. She will look a picture, and all the other girls will be as green with envy as her bag and gloves. . . Then, suddenly, dark clouds will pile up over the Orongorongas;,a nippy wind will chase the early breeze and catch it and gambol with it up the harbour, and they will hurl themselves together with exhuberant high spirits on to 'the city streets and up the Tinakorl' Hills, like a couple of playful dogs making hay in somebody’s cineraria-bed. And with very much the same result. • And the other girls will be sorry and amused. The new dresses are, truly, so charming that it seems hard to wait so long to see them worn. It is not nearly time for warm days yet, of course, but this ridiculous—if unavoidable —custom of showing summer clothes in winter trains our eyes to the beauty of new styles and fabrics, and we become tired of the winter things before the cold weather has had its proper innings. The same absurdity will occur again in the middle of the summer, when we shall be : invited to Inspect and buy our winter : outfits, and when, with feminine impatience, we shall begin to wear them long before we should. So the situation evens itself up in the long run. There is a new linen which is a decided step forward in a direction for which we have been waiting. In the more expensive makes it is a silk linen; in the cheaper, a mercerized thread gives the same effect, and much the same result It has the great advantage of being uncrushable, and it neither shrinks nor fades. Tennis dresses • will be most popular in this fabric, which comes in the palest of pastel shades. Sleeveless, or with little sleeves above the elbow, their dresses are mostly made straight to the knees, or at any rate, to a low hip-line, when flat pleats are added for fullness. There are no flares, as far as I could see; if godets are cut circular they are stitched down for a few inches to give a pleated effect. Drawn thread-work, and satin-stitch embroidery, are used in many instances ' for trimming, as well as stitched bands of contrasting colour. I saw one dress of white silk in a new knotty weave, trimmed with narrow bands of pink and green. It had a coat of silk linen in a different weave, with pink and green collar, cuffs and facings, and was finished with a crocheted posy introducing a note of primrose. - Zephyr is going to be used in quite an Important way, the new designs and colourings giving it a personality of its own. There are morning and tennis frocks very like those of the two-and-a-half-yard variety of 1920— only very different, if you understand. They are of Now instead of Then —like our Early Victorian models. Cotton georgette has the most adorable flowered designs, and there are semi-evening, dresses for girls that are sure to be very popular. They have a 'more lasting quality than they had; and the colour schemes are bettor done. Voiles, too, seem to me to promise well—but I shall have to continue this theme next week. So much to say—so little said, as Cecil Rhodes—l’m sorry! That was "do,” and “done,” wasn’t it? With love. Yours ever, JANE.