AUTUMN IN NEW YORK

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 91, 11 January 1935, Page 5

AUTUMN IN NEW YORK

Parties and Dinners Tlie autumn season, which is almost as important in New York as the sumn.ier season is to Londoners, is well u>. der way with the first debutante parties, the happy little dinners and luncheons which everyone .gives before important winter entertaining must begin, wrote an American correspondent to "The Queen" in November. But important entertaining does not mean boresome, lengthy formidable dinners any more. The tendency is toward small dinners for a small number of best friends, with the eqiphasis laid on superb cookery, exquisite appointments. a charming' setting. More and more the hostess is becoming responsible for her table; even the arrangement of the flowers is no longer left to servants. And for good cause! The shops are irresistible these days in the showings of table wares. Old-fashioned, heavy lustrous damask cloths are once more in favour, or the opposite extreme of a beautifully polished, .bare table. Not quite bare, for there will be lace or delicate ninon, sheer linen oy net mats laid for each cover.

All flower arrangements arc low. and often little figures of translucent glass, or shining metal are grouped about the flowers. These may be chosen to match the glasses at each cover, and candlesticks bearing tail tapers will complete the table. Useless ornaments are abandoned, and their values turned into tine porcelain, crystal and silver pieces which are actually used. Bridge and Backgammon. These little dinners precede inline evenings with bridge or backgammon, the latter still holding its own with many young New Yorkers. When they go to the theatre, a prize fight, the movies, or to hear some music, they dine out. Dining out means entirely different standards of dress than tliese same people accepted in London last summer. Even the exclusive little places for cocktails and dinner, or supper, are open to a great man.v men and women who do not care to dress; therefore, we all must have some restaurant gowns, simple semi-clinner frocks,

usually of velvet this autumn, and little matching coats to top them. Of course, there is a hat, small, snug, minus any feather, but perhaps with a little clip of brilliants or precious stones fastened just over the left eyebrow. A few very large, severely simple black velvet hats are seen with these frocks. They’re romantic and vastly becoming and flattering all evening; something which the little skull caps cease to be along about midnight when not-so-young eyes look tired, and checks sag a bit. It’s better fun to dine quietly aud then to look in on a night club -with its delicious ilarkj’ dancers and singers. Afterward, there may be dancing in some foolish little dive in Greenwich Village, or preferably at someone’s pent-house apartment high up above the Fast River’s busy waterway. Homes in the Sky. I'ent-houses, those apartments which canny builders have created on the rooftops of New York, are especially popular, for they are quiet. The noise of buses, street cars, river boats, riveting machines, fire engine whistles, and police sirens penetrate but gently to these homes in the sky. Many of them are built like a house with two o.r more floors, high ceilings, large rooms, wood-burning fireplaces, terraces on which flowers, shrubbery, even trees, are growing. Their decoration may be anything from a Spanish colonial farmhouse style to ultra modernist. Also Georgian English and eighteenth century French furniture is enjoying a revival of popularity here, and some of the smartest decorators are doing enchanting rooms wtih white walls and white accents. There are so many shades of white—bisque, oyster, pearl beige, plaster white like the walls in Basque farmhouses—that lovely effects are possible.

Cool greens, water-melon pink, plum, pomegranate and puce colour (that tint Napoleon liked in his rooms) are used with white in these rooms. White flowers in alabaster or white opaque glass, white lamp bases, even white leather chairs, are to be seen. The Directoire style is somewhat in vogue for smaller apartments, and everywhere provincial French pieces are to be found in more simple interiors. Many of the latter are furnished with lovely antiques found in the everincreasing number of antique shops along Madison and Lexington Avenues. Even the better department stores have reputable antique sections'within their organisation.