Fashion’s Choice

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 206, 28 May 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

Fashion’s Choice

Opening Events of London Season Show Preference For Flowers “Dominion” Special Service —By Airmail. London, May 6. ANY interesting fashion notes were ~ struck at the opening events of the London season. Private view day at the Royal Academy provided at least One topical dress theme, and Covent Garden Opera first night countless others. The opera opening, with Tauber singing in “The Magic Flute,” was an excellent occasion for examining the best of the latest evening fashions against a more than usually brilliant background. Covent Garden is as bright and shining as the proverbial new pin. - It has a new mile-and-a-half red Wilton carpet, new seats that outdo cinema seating in luxury, a new curtain, new and stronger lighting, and new ivory and gold paint on the stairs and in the famous foyer. But most important in the opera house’s decorative scheme, so far as women’s frocks are concerned, is the new idea of using flowers. Only once before, on a very special occasion, have such masses of .flowers been allowed inside the sacred precincts. And then the smell of roses was so strong that women fainted, and had to be carried out. Women must be less frail to-day, or it may have been that they were too busy this season to swoon, appreciating as they undoubtedly were the beautiful floral setting for their equally beautiful flower-trimmed dresses.

Every other frock was flower trimmed. There were a great many orchids. Mrs. Richard Tauber wore a bunch of white orchids high on her hair, and Elizabeth Bergner had a spray of similar flowers on the shoulders of her gold and white dress. Flower posies and sprays took the place of jewels on wrists, necks and heads. Short hairstyles had given way to late Victorian and Edwardian coiffures and most women had their hair dressed high on the head. Another fashion revival was very long gloves, plain, jewelled and embroidered, in white, coloured or golden kid. Vivid red cloaks were as conspicuous as crinoline skirted gowns, one of the most striking of which was worn by a Polish countess. Many yards of black corded silk must have gone to its making. The countess had dressed her hair in the period of her frock, and wore a filmy black veil and a heavy gold necklace and bracelets.