WHAT WOMEN WILL WEAR

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 168, 12 April 1935, Page 5

WHAT WOMEN WILL WEAR

London to Dictate Jubilee Year Fashions

The eyes of the fashion world are on London, and West End designers are preparing to dress, in addition to their ordinary clients, thousands of smart women who are coming from five continents for the jubilee celebrations, states the “Daily Telegraph.” In St. James’s Palace sit the men who have become dress dictators to the British Empire for 1935. They are high officials of the Lord Chamberlain’s office. Instructions as to correct dress will accompany each of the thousands of invitations being issued for the many public Royal Jubilee functions. Women in all parts of the Empire are so interested in the. trend of jubilee fashions that London dressmakers are being inundated with requests for copies of their models, even before they have designed them! These requests come from fashion houses in Australia, India, and Canada, and also from the United States. All the time that London dressmakers are modelling their new spring clothes they are thinking of the jubilee. You can find them now in their work rooms, painting on their life-size canvases—the paintbrush in their case being a roll of material and the canvas the mannequin on whom they try out their new designs. Here are some of the thoughts that one can glean from the studios of fashion just now: Fashion Must Rejoice. “Yes. . . . Everything must contribute to the joy of this wonderful season. Fashion, too, must rejoice. I must have materials that will be of a bright and joyous nature —fabrics that sparkle—yet, not too much, for it is going to be a season of dignity and grace.” The thoughts of another designer run on a different aspect of the jubilee. “It is going to be a season of wonderful day clothes,” he said, in his queer, erratic way. “A time of great public ceremonies, for which women will want more formal day-wear than for any period since the Edwardian. They will come to the London dressmakers, for only in London will they find the right atmosphere for choosing their jubilee clothes.” • This dressmaker has prepared for the jubilee by moving into a larger house, taking in addition two extra workrooms, employing 80 more workgirls, increasing his team of mannequins—he has just searched London for two blondes —and securing a special fitter, who will del vote her time to modelling smart day clothes, mostly for jubilee functions. Evening Clothes. As for evening clothes, the jubilee, the dressmakers believe, will prove that London is the world’s smartest capitaL “Englishwomen are showing the world, how to dress,” Major J. B. HandleySeymour has said. “There is no woman who looks more graceful in evening dress or is more capable of carrying it with dignity. In Paris very little evening dress is worn. Paris in the last few years has become dowdy.” Women are no longer dashing off to Paris for their clothes. The London designers are getting a greater reputa-

lion. In the matter of Court fashions they come into their own, for even the French designers with the greatest names cannot understand the environment of Court life. The collections will be unusually large. Women have got to choose more clothes for a five months' season than they would for the normal season of under three months. Designers are therefore creating more models. _ There will be fewer exaggerations in dress, thanks to Court influence. The Jubilee line, evolved to harmonise with the pageantry of Court functions, will produce a year of very graceful models, with some Edwardian tendencies. This is the idea source for Jubilee Year fashions, as Edwardian days were the heydey of Court influence in social life.