Duchess of Kent’s New Hats: The 1936 Debutantes: News from Abroad

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 207, 29 May 1936, Page 5

Duchess of Kent’s New Hats: The 1936 Debutantes: News from Abroad

(Bx

Fenella.)

Loudon, May 9. The Duchess of Kent has started a series of hat fashions. At the time of her marriage, she began a craze for pill-box '‘marina” hats. Ever since she has been a leader of British fashions. Her new hats live up to this distinction.

“Dominion” Special Service.—By Air Mail, the girl’s presentation at Court. This year the actual presentatiou will be less expensive for garden parties in the grounds of Buckingham Palace are to replace the more formal and exciting Courts owing to the death of King George. After the presentation, it is customary for the girl’s parents to give more parties and dances. In addition, the girl must have exquisite clothes. Her shoes, stockings and hats alone will run up a big bill, while her evening dresses will probably cost £l2O. That sum will allow her 12 dresses at an average of £lO each. As eaffijt dress can only be worn a few times a popular debutante needs at least 12. In the old days, this expense was considered wasted if the girl did not get engaged to be married during her first season. Now, however, it is quite unusual for this to happen, the debutantes are only 18, whereas the average age for society marriages appears now to be 22. Art Success At If. Art success has come to 16-year-old Mary Audsley, of Church Stile House, Cobham, Surrey. Despite her youth, a clay head she has sculptured is being shown at the Royal Academy Exhibition. She has thus achieved one of the greatest.distinctions a British artist can attain. The clay head is modelled with a rough surface in the manner of Epstein. Ib is entitled “Ruth,” the name of Mary’s sister, who is a dancer. The head is thrown back in a dancing poise. Mrs. Audsley told me that Mary had been interested in drawing and modelling since she was a baby. “When she was a year'old,” Mrs. Audsley said when I met her at the Royal Academy private view,” Mary often drew with a pencil, and we have drawings which she did when just over a year old.” She has also been successful at exhibitions of the Royal Drawing Society. And she has won six or seven gold medals.” Mrs. Audsley added that Mary had not studied drawing until a few months ago. Diplomats Ban Anger. Many prominent women, especially those in the Civil Service, resent keenly the Goveroment’s decision that the Diplomatic and Consular Services are to remain closed to them. Marriage and the varying position of women throughout the world were given by the Government committee which examined the problem as the two great stumbling blocks to a successful entry of women into diplomatic service. Personally, I heartily agree with the committee. Men, I feel, can consider facts more impartially and with clearer vision than can women—even the most dispassionate of women. Many leading women in London, however, think differently. Dr. Maude Royden, the famous woman preacher and peace worker, told me that she considered the decision “a very retrograde step,” and in flat contradiction to the Sex Disqualification Act. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I should be inclined to think that women would be more useful in diplomacy than men, nob because they are less honest but because they are far less inclined to think it was a merely temporary substitute for war.” Although they are now thus barred from being diplomats, the value of women as civil servants has been admitted by the Government. In the White Paper announcing the diplomat decision, the Government states that “it must not be thought to be questioning the advantage of the employment of women in the home Civil Service.” At present there are only two women Ministers in diplomacy. They are Mrs. Ruth Bryan Ownc, United States Min-

There are eight of them. Three are all black and of these two are straw. All are worn well forward on the head. The most unusual has a shallow black crepe crown and no brim. At the back the crown goes, down into a point. In place of brim there is a narrow twist of black feathers and a pair of black feather Mercufy wings, one each side of the hat. It is meant to be worn well forward on the head and at an acute angle so that one eyebrow is almost covered. This hat has started a one-side earring fashion. The ear on the side that the hat dips down should be hidden by a soft wave of hair. The other ear should be half exposed and should have a neat pearl earring or a daub of rouge. This gives the head a balanced appearance.

Another of the Duchess’s hats has a wide curving hrim of black straw. Its shallow crown of stiff net is hidden by a wreath of gardenias. Beneath the brim at the back is a bow of black corded ribbon. This hat is designed for garden parties and similar semiformal occasions. Other hats created by London designers are just as original. One I saw this week had sewn to the crown silver bells that tinkled when the mannequin nodded her head. She carried a bag which was also decorated with silver bells.

Another hat had a pair of hearts pierced with an arrow. Veils of lace, cotton and silk are still popular. Some have tiny splashes of vivid paint. Others are ornamented with sequins or glistening beads. Carrots as Trimming.

In America, hat trimmings are even queerer,'! learn. Hats trimmed with miniature carrots, string beans and radishes were a feature at one of the season’s outstanding fashion shows of summer clothes in New York.

Colours inspired by the vegetable garden will be the fashion this summer in America, it was revealed. Among the new hues will be wax bean yellow (a soft, wax yellow), parsley green (a fresh, bright green), rhubarb rojc (a vivid coral), cabbage red (a fu ichia wine colour) and garden blue, “the soft, mauve-like shade of the Texas blue bonnet flower.” “Texas Ranger” hats, fashioned with cloven crowns and soft broad rolling brims will go with clothes for spectators at sports events. “Sunshine Shadow” hats, with the shallowest possible crowns and wide, up-rolled brims, were shown with summer suits and afternoon clothes, while boyish caps and bretons appeared with bicycling outfits. All the costumes were displayed by mannequins whose lipstick matched the tones of their finger-nail enamel and whose powder and eye shadow were selected to reflect the colour of their costumes. £lOOO a Girl. The debutante season is now opening in London. During the next three months some 350 girls, whose ages range between 17 and 19 will “do the round” —at a cost of about £lOOO each to their parents or guardians. Altogether, therefore, £350,000 will be spent on launching this season’s debutantes. Wealthy parents will spend even more. Sometimes as much as £5OOO or £6OOO is spent on launching a daughter. This is how the money goes. First there are private dinner parties, with the best of food and wine. Next comes

istev in Copenhagen, and Mme. Kollantai, Soviet Minister in Stockholm. Stamp “Queen” in Six Months. No sex bar prevents women from being stamp dealers. At the ninth London International Stamp Dealers’ Bourse held this week there were at least half a dozen women doing “big business” with their stamps. They included one London girl w ho has been a stamp dealer for only six months. She began by collecting Jubilee issues. She discovered that the Falkland Island Jubilee stamps were rare, so she wrote to a friend there and purchased some 18 sets. These laid the foundations of her business, ’lhey sold for big sums, and the girl invested in other rare Jubilee stamps which have since gone up in value. As a result of her keen dealing, this young woman is now recognised as one of the most important of the younger generation of stamp dealers. I went out of curiosity to the Bourse one day this week. All round sat stamp dealers with their precious albums laid out. They talked quietly to each other and in a few minutes big deals were made often involving the transfer of hundreds of pounds worth of stamps. Dealers from all over the world were at the Bourse. The stamps on view were worth thousands of pounds. The most valuable collection was a set of French colonial stamps worth £2500. Most of the dealers were expert linguists as well as stamp magnates. They needed to be. Five hundred stamp dealers attended the Bourse and they did business in 15 different languages! Five Rules for Life. Dame Henrietta Barnett, who has been described as one of the most remarkable women in Great Britain, celebrates mer 85th birthday this week. For some time she has been in poor health, never having completely recovered from an illness, due mainly to overwork, about 18 months ago. Her abundant health and energy up to the time of her breakdown, however, she attributes to five rules, namely: Rise at 5.30 a.m. every day. Work very hard. Read newspapers very carefully every day. Eat very little. ' Say your prayers very often. With her husband, the late Canon S. A. Barnett, Dame Henrietta founded Toynbee Hall, which was the world’s first university mission settlement She has spent a great deal of her time working among people iu the East End. They also founded the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and the Hampstead Gar den Suburb, where Dame Henrietta has lived for many years. Dame Henrietta has been a prolific writer, and, when 70, took up painting, and has had several of her pictures hung in the Royal Academy. She was created Dame of the British Empire in 1924. Here and There. Mrs. Tommy Rose, wife of the Eng-land-South Africa record-breaking flier, has had a map printed on a white silk blonse. It shows the route of her husband’s flight from Cape Town to England. Orange blossom bracelets and “earrings” to match her orange blossom wreath was worn by one Loudon bride this week. “I want a little dog,” said Miss Nina Devitt, an Australian actress now in London, over the wireless. In a few hours her flat in the heart of London was crowded with dogs—including a Great Dane. She is to keep one, a Pekinese sent by a woman who is going back to Australia. The rest have been returned to their owners.