ENGLISH FASHIONS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 18

ENGLISH FASHIONS

FOE THE CHILDREN.

An interesting talk is given in the London "Daily Telegraph" on the subjects of fashions for children! as follows :—

There is one thing very certain in the dress world, that never were children's clothes more practical and picturesque than they are to-day. Happily the little people need not bo much depend on the vagaries of the weather as do their elders for the successful display of their garments. Except those for party wear and the very best frocks, ther is little to spoil in the holiday kit. If the sun refuses to shine, cottons and cretonnes give place to the homely brown bollands and serges, and for sheer simplicity and good taste nothing is more suitable for sea and country wear. Still, there is this season a most interesting collection of cretonne models, made up into most attractive beach and garden frocks, for in truth, the real old-fashion-ed chintz has been revived—that shiny calico fabric of our great-great-grand-mother's day. Possibly such a revival is due to the general craze for patterns that.has this year been such a feature in the fabric world. In fact many of the early eighteenth-century modes have been resuscitated and reappear in delightful guises, which is doubtless the reason of the chintz and cretonne craze. Surely nothing could be more becoming to the smaller children, who can so successfully demonstrate the picturesque note in dress.

Most little folk would manage to look charming in any of the models here depicted. The tiny tot wears an old-world patterned glazed' chintz,' the cream ground being decorated with yellow and brown rosebuds and piped with a yellow chintz edging. It is a dear little frock, cleverly manipulated so as to give sufficient fullness for bucket and spade work. Equally attractive is a gingham and cretonne combination for the older girl of 10 or 11. Here a neat straight frock has a quaint flounce of bright cretonne to match the turnover collar. The deep Persian-blue cotton is charmingly allied to a cretonne with the same groundwork, but embellished by means of a very gay design in red, pink, and mauve flowers.

Sponge-cloth, or the new make of ratine, figures among the cotton fabrics that prove admirable materials for beachwear, such stuffs possessing sufficient substance to keep their place, in spite of those soft sea breezes that are ever very welcome. The model shown for a girl of 15 (generally described as the "awkward age*) ia in a pale rust shade of ratine, edeed and stitched with a paler ahade. The yoke is prettily smoked, and the deep hem is a useful mode for the growing girl. The sash fashion, too, admits of chance. There are many checked fjin^hams this season, made into frocks equally useful for work or play. T"hev are nearly always combined with a plain self-coloured fabric, and so can relieve the monotony of those straight pinafore dresses that are most becoming and practical to the civl in her teens — always a much more difficult person to dress than her voun<?er sister. Small children look delightful in most thines, always rcrovidine they are simnle enouch. Further, they can -faithfully copy the quaint.fashions of their orreat irrandmothers 1" day. and look more attractive and happy than the'r ancestors; for whatever punnss and flounces and amusing fantasies the children of modern days wear, they insist on bein<* thorouehly cool and comfortable, whether their garments he comoosed of scree, silk, cotton, or orcandi. It. is the age of youth—unhampered and free.