SHOULDER POSIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 113, 16 May 1927, Page 13

SHOULDER POSIES

That charming fashion detail, the shoulder posy, instead of growing demode, is now increasing its dimensions. The very newest French dance frocks have huge chiffon roses high up on the shoulder and full enough for their petals actually to bruih the wearer s cheek. The smaller knot of flowers may be tucked sometimes into the low V-shaped decolletage of an evening gown; But gigantic shoulder posies are smartest wear, writes Mrs .Herbert Richardson in the London ‘‘Daily Telegraph.” It is amusing to find fashion history once again so repeating itself. For the huge posy brushing the wearer’s face was a favourite style of .the seventeeneighties, .and as charming with fullpowdered curls as it is to-day with the sleek shingle and Eton crop. Fashionable women of the period with which the delightfully revived old English opera', ‘‘Lionel and Clarissa,” and the more, recent ‘‘Berkeley Square” of Mr. Balderston and Mr. Squire, have familiarised us wore huge posies of real or artificial flowers, set to one side of their “bouffant” corsages of puffed gauze, which, again, were so different from the slim lines of modern gowns. The high flower petals touched the wearer’s cheek, or even tickled her pearl-set ear, and necessitated an upright carriage of the head and chin, which gave the prettiest lines to face and neck. Tiny vases of silver or glass, specially shaped 'to fit inside the stays, held water for real roses and lilies; and the artificial flowers were duly scented, just as our daintiest posies are to-day; Warren, the famous Bond street perfumier, had tho greatest reputation for ‘? doubly perfuming and scenting a nosegay,” sometimes to such a pitch of refinement that it “held not the least vulgar odour of the flowers.” French taste carried the fashion a step further, adding huge knots of artificial flowers to the towering eighteenth century head-dress. And at a fete given by Marie Antoinette at the Petit Trianon in 1782, Madame Oberkirch created a sensation by wearing in her hair great posies of real flowers, set in flat bottles which were curved to the shape of her head and hidden among her powdered curls—“spring amidst the snow,” as a poetical courtier prettily remarked. But exaggeration killed the fashion, as it has many another charming mode. The Maccaroni of the period copied the ladies, and set absurd posies in the lapel of his satin coat. The bluff simplicity of dress affected by Charles James Fox and his followers, both men and women,, had no place for such a dainty detail. Arid the caricaturists, Conway in particular, poured scorn upon the nosegay, JBut even the caricatures cannot quite destroy the grace of tho eigh-teonth-century posy—the charm which the wearing of a flower always lends to a pretty woman. One hopes tho revived fashion of to-day may long endure, giving one more touch of feminine softness to modern dress. And iftho brushing of those high chiffon petals makes a more erect and dainty poise of-check and chin, the modern girl will have recaptured yet another charm of which the fashionable droop of yesteryear was sadly and inevitably robbing her.