"SHE SHALL HAVE MUSIC"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 118, 22 May 1939, Page 14

"SHE SHALL HAVE MUSIC"

THE HIDDEN BOX IN HATS AND BAGS

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative.)

LONDON, May 1

For a considerable time past musical boxes have been hidden in jugs, mugs, dessert* dishes, and many other articles for domestic use. Their presence is revealed only when lifted, and care must be taken never to immerse these precious pieces in water when washing is in process. But now, it seems, we may make music as we move, for musical boxes may be embedded in millinery, in handbags, and in dress buckles. i

The "Daily Mail" Paris correspondent writes of a fashion show which was held there on Sunday, when visitors were regaled with snatches of the "Blue Danube," "Little Old Lady," and a few bars of Mendelssohn favourites. There was no orchestra and no radio.

Melody came from musical boxes hidden in the crown of hats worn by the mannequins; in their handbags— shaped like concertinas or pianos; and in the buckles of their evening dresses.

With some of the afternoon dresses were worn hats with high wicker-work crowns like bird cages, and in each cage was a bluebird with outstretched wings. Other hats had wide brims pulled down over the face like a mask—some of them actually reached to the chin. The brims were made of transparent net, and served as a window. Trimmings included nuts, artichokes, grass, or pencils.

A new type of sports outfit was introduced with two skirts. One was an ordinary straight skirt, the other like an old-fashioned pair of bloomers, buttoning below the knee.

Running through the entire collection was the music motif, with choker necklets representing entire bars of 'music and pin lapels and buttons in the form of musical instruments.

There is presumably no reason why hair should not be blue as well as

black, but the transformation still causes a little sensation—at least when it is more than the prevalent bluebagging of white hair, wrote a correspondent recently in the "Manchester Guardian." Even purple hair makes people look round, though this is a commoner way of dealing with the irongrey hair that can be unbecoming. White hair or very blonde hair, ' is taken as a matter of course, so much so that nobody today talks about black hair any more than about black eyes.

Thus hair is coloured, discoloured, corrugated, screwed, curled, turned into shavings, converted into wet string, moulded on the head, just as though it were something that did not grow but were extraneous to the head.

The open-air vogue gave rise to the sunburnt hair which, interestingly enough, was adopted by young men as well as by young women. Casting off their hats, they displayed splashes of yellow in the middle of dark hair; indeed, this possibility seemed the only saving grace of dark hair.

A still later development is striped hair. The bleaching element is put on in rows so that the head has a striped light-and-dark effect. It only remains to adopt the check or, still more, to see how tartan hair can be compassed for those of the stronger nationalistic feelings.