HATS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 148, 20 March 1934, Page 5

HATS

To Turn Up or Not? AND BEARDS ARE IN (From Our London Correspondent). London, January 19. We are all eyeing each other with suspicion in London at the moment the womenfolk I mean—and gazing hat-wards. For the question is whether to be fashionable and hideous or be old-fashioned and pretty. Hats have gone back seven years. In fact they are most grim. They turn off the face in a halo-like way and must be worn well back exposing the forehead and covering the back of the head. This is bound to attract frowns and corrugations so devastatingly unbecoming. For quite a while we have enjoyed a really attractive style which covers the forehead in a gentle peak and shows lots of curls at the back. Now curls are on the wane and halos are in. I met Sybil Thorndike in Shaftesbury Avenue early one morning this week, the first day without fog for ages. She was on her way to rehearsal and was wearing a smart green suit under her teddy bear coat and not one of the new ha's. We talked between the roar of the buses about bats. Why, I don’t quite know, but one simply has to, it seems, and I found that she holds the same opinion of them as most of us. We then talked of plays and rehearsals and fogs and voices, all between traffic noises and jostling people. I noticed she was thinner than when I had seen her last. Her new play is in rehearsal —the name is a secret —and will be produced in February. The next person I saw was Ursula Jeans, who is playing at the Old Vic in “The Tempest”; this was at lunch in a Soho restaurant. She was wearing a Halo Hat, and looked very nice in it. Being pretty and fair, witli big blue eyes, It Suited her. She wore with it a sable-dyed ermine coat with large stiffened collar, and the hat was honeycoloured felt. I felt rather dazed and wondered if my theories were coming unstuck. ' Over in the corner by the window sat Donald Calthorpe with a scowl on his face, alone. He was reading a paper furiously and didn’t even look up to eat. I longed to see if he was reading about Hats, and peeped. He wasn’t —it was the racing nage. At the next table to us sat Winifred Shotter, who acts in pictures, with a sun-tan make-up which suited her black hair and eyes. Her hat was halo and her coat was of large black and white check. She told me she had to be In bed very early that night as they were starting on a film at seven the next morning. “Do you like the new hats?” I asked, once more on my grim subject. “Yes—when I don’t feel tired.” That is more or less the answer to the riddle, for Paris' says “No,” definitely, and Parisians refuse to wear halos. The New Beards. At six o’clock I wended my way to Bloomsbury for a party given by a well-known critic where a great many people were assembled in a huge boxlike room lined with rose wallpaper and padded with rose-coloured carpet Heavy rose drapes hid the windows and kept out the threatened fog. and everything was rose-coloured. Having greeted my host, I looked round and discovered that beards were in. Every second man was adorned either in a Van Dyke, Shakespeare, or Bolshie. It was quite alarming. Then I saw Ronald Frankau, that clever artist and singer of songs, and was relieved to see that lie had no beard yet. A Labour M.P. was in the stages of growing one and very handsome he looked, while many members of the Stage had achieved perfect examples. All this rather put me out of my stride with hats, so I concentrated for a time on the women folk. There were Russians, Parisians and Americans as well as Englishwomen, but t>o my astonishment most of them had removed their huts, the room being warm, and carried them in the hands. The long wormlike garment to the ankles in wide stripes and checks seemed very popular. With this you wear a sac coat ■to the knees, a high waisted skirt, and a high neck blouse. And your skirt must be —definitely roust be —so tight that Jon can just walk. Eccentric but amusing. Long-handle cigarette holders, straight hair, and enormous earrings are necessities. Having been deprived of hats. I resorted once more to beards, and discovered the finest specimen of all—fiery red. aud belonging to a famous musician. We talked for some time and I plucked up courage to ask why the beard. He bristled —it bristled I mean—and he whispered “A secret society—a new cult—.” With this ringing ip my ears I fled Into the fog and called wildly for a taxi.