SOME NEW NOTIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 132, 1 December 1938, Page 19

SOME NEW NOTIONS

Handbags achieve a great many new and interesting features at this season, for with the prospect of days in the country or at the beach, their uses become more varied and their characters more versatile.

Big classic calf-skin bags are an exceptionally useful type for the busy city woman. Most often shaped like a huge dispatch envelope they have drama in handles of gold links or plaited suede. Paris and luggage-tan are colours that, applied to calf-skin bags, spell success with neat town tailored frocks in almost any colour.

Such bags have a fine attitude to combining with sports outfits too and it might be said that they, in the very simplicity and invariable severity of their style are the perfect all-purpose handbag for the present. For golf it is always handy to have a purse near by. I like those small football-shaped affairs of bright-toned morocco leather with extra handles that may be swung over the shoulder or on your golf bag with equal aplomb. They zipp securely and obligingly closed to keep compact, change, and comb in readiness by your side.

DRAMATISING THE DOROTHY BAG. The gay young thing will welcome the return of the Dorothy bag as it is promised us in straw to go with aj matching sun bonnet and in silks and satins to dramatise evening gowns with the finishing touch of Edwardian elegance. These nonsensical and feminine fantasies of fashion are simply made at home and have a very practical side in that several may be inexpensively I contrived each to complete a different j costume. Believe it or not, but velvet goes to making some particularly smart "dress maker" handbags, and these go with cloche-shaped hats of the same plush fabric moulded over stiffened book muslin foundations. The five o'clock hour claims these as a most suitable time for being worn with the utmost! grace. Long or elbow-length gloves of velvet may accompany such a set. j

Grosgrain or petersham is the fabric combined with the ripe yellow, wheat or oatmeal shadings of rustic straw for carefree sets of bonnet and bags with which smart girls will formalise their casual dirndl dresses for the town. It's new to have long straps on almost every bag. Then they may be twisted over the arm or looped nonchalantly

PURSE AND PERSONALITY

over one snoulder in the manner of a schoolboy's satchel and the effect is at i once divertingly different and cunningly convenient when there are parcels to be carried as well: and who is not laden with packages in these days of flurried Christmas shopping? HELPFUL FOR HOLIDAY MAKERS. Those who have got over the problem of buying and dispatching numerous Christmas gifts are now beset with the further problem of planning their [holidays and deciding what clothes they will take along. To simplify matters it is wise to embark on an absolute orgy of bags, but ones of a different order to the formal examples I have just been telling . you about. These are* such a recent discovery that I you won't be able to buy them here yet and needle and thread is your only method of attaining these assets to simplified packing. Moire silk or a heavy brocade is an elegant material to employ when you make several en-velope-shaped bags to contain stockings, lingerie, blouses, and so on. For facial tissues, a dripping toothbrush, and miscellaneous beauty aids it is a cute notion to make smaller . shapes lined with oiled silk or proofed cloth. Shoe bags are also helpful adjuncts to this scheme if ease in packing and unpacking is desired. Also, an advantage about these elegant cases is that tissue paper may be dispensed with yet frocks will emerge from the enfolding wrapper at the end of a journey with all their pristjne freshnessunmarred by creases. BEAUTY AT THE BEACH. The beach makes fresh demands on the ingenuity of clever designers and manufacturers who, fortunately for us, have responded with an enticing array of novelties in the shape of beach bags. Some are just minute little handbags for minimising the bother of carrying small change, sun glasses, a comb, and powder compact, to a mere nothing. Then there are gargantuan carry-alls that have space for not only the small accessories necessary for a wellgroomed appearance but also a bathing suit, towel, sandals, and fitted compartments for bottles and tubes of sun-tan lotion and the rest.

One such bag I met in .a city shop was of plaster pink American cloth machine tucked in the fan shape of an enormous shell. Others are of Italian striped canvas or woven, coloured string. A bag that comprises its useful possibilities between travelling and the beach is of a quilted oblong kitbag shape. Coming in all colours, perhaps the nicest was sea-green in the medium of shiny glistening oil cloth. These are beauty bags in that the fitted compartments and smart coloured composition-topped flasks and bottles are designed to hold iill manner of preparations from sun-oil, skin food, and nail varnish to shampoo or brilliantine.

Bags in any shape or size for different purposes are superlatively good Christmas gifts to give or receive. For an elderly woman or a keen needlewoman or knitter, consider the merits of a quilted glaze-chintz work-bag shaped like a rectangular box and finely corded round the edge for an exclusive decorativeness.

For any odds and ends at a picnic take along an extra handkerchief besides the one you wear on your head and knot it Dick Whittington fashion to carry knitting or what you will.— M.R.