MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 August 1931, Page 7

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OF INTEREST

(Notes by

Marjorie)

THE ENGLISH WOMAN. AN AMERICAN PICTURE. Before I came to England I had a certain picture in my mind of the English woman. Every American has. The picture has fair hair, worn very simply, almost classically, and yet. softly, about the face. Her eyes are blue or grey, and wide and grave under well-shaped but naturally lovely eyebrows. Her complexion is the exquisite pink and white of the peaches-and-cream tradition; her manner is dignified and reserved. Her figuie is fairly tall, slim, and athletic, ambshe clothes it in simple, perfectly tailored garments of the most excellent quality.

This picture in the American mind is as definite and famous a type as the Gibson Girl, but with this difference: Neither I nor any of my generation have ever seen the Gibson Girl, and we have a suspicion that she never existed outside a magazine; but we have seen the English woman, and we know that she exists in real life as well as in books. I saw her the first day I came to England in the earliest stage of her development (writes Mildred Boil in the “Morning Post”). I was walking in Kensington Gardens, pinching myself to see whether I was really looking at Kensington Palace and the Round Pond, or whether I was asleep or still reading “Peter Pan.” Running over the grass under the great, oak trees —a park-like scene such as I had visioned through a hundred English novels—came a little girl, lolling a hoop and laughing back at her nurse. Her fair locks were flying; her gaiters twinkled under the little flared skirt of her fawncoloured coat. To my astonishment and delight she lifted her incredibly flower-like face to mine and asked, in the most English, tones and friendly manner I had yet beard, if I could tell her the lime. I. shall never forget, that little girl, first because she did not take me for the very foreign foreigner 1 was afraid I looked but did not want to be, and secondly because she showed me at first glance that the English “type” docs exist. 1 have been seeing her ever since. 1 have seen her at college, playing games, studying dancing; I have seen her in the next stage, serious and capable in the career she has chosen. 1 have met her, a young wife, creating a home of culture and quiet ease; and 1 have visited her as an old lady, increasingly intelligent and gracious and beautiful. Her infinite variations I find in every house and street and city. Even the housemaids and farm girls delight me, lor now. I can visualise all the descriptions J have read of them—the pretty liltle misses like Hetty in “Adam Bede,” and the hearty humorous lassies such as Fielding delighted in. I can see also what a woman born and bred in aristocracy looks like, and that, reality too is not disappointing. In America, we have no royalty, but that, does not stop one from being able to tell and appreciate the regal air when one sees it. NATURAL BEAUTY. It is the average intelligent English girl that I like most. I find her extraordinarily well-mannered. She is quiet, poised, polite, thoughtful of her mother and aunts. She is more modest and less sophisticated than American girls. She has steady and serene eyes, and reserve of mannei, ami her beauty is of a natural kind.

We may have a larger percentage of pretty young girls in America—indeed, it is a pleasure to walk down the streets of an American city and see how chic and attractive all the young women are, how even the plainest seems to make the most of her best features. But this prettiness of youth and clothes and piquancy is (di aei 'ent from that beauty which consists not in regularity of feature or charm of dress, but in the shining through of a strong and in teresting character. And that kind of beauty 1 see again and again in the English girl and woman. What our liking of the English woman and her ways may amount to is the fact that we are really "cut on the same pattern,” but certainly English women have a high reputation loi beauty and intelligence across the Atlantic’ to live up to; and, after a year of observing them, I am convinced I hat they are succeeding.

NEW SPRING HATS. MASCULINE MODES. II is rather curious to note that, directly dress becomes fluffy and teminino and the boyish mode is made entirely a thing of the past, milliners turn instantly to masculine hats for thui inspiration. The top-nat has not yet appeared, but in England, saj - a correspondent, we have all the otliti s. First, to appear was the straw boaiei. macle of dark coarse straw mixtures with a high shine, banded with striped ribbon to suggest “colours.” and worn at a. most difficult angle, pushed veil down on one side at the back, the bowler crown, also in coarse straw, but in pale colours, its narrow, straight brim edged with a tiny dropping vci , or with the brim rolled up in true bowler fashion. The round American sailor s hat was the next, shape copied, in tweed to match the frock or coat, or m straw and horsehair lace so twisted and .lent as to almost suggest a tricorne. The newest arrival is most certainly a small edition of the Boy Scouts hat. This is made of fine straw, its round crown going up almost to a point in the centre* and its brim quite straight, if narrower than the original. As yet it has no chin-strap, but this may follow, as a model hat seen recently not only had a leather dog collar for its hatband, but was completed with a metal disc for the owner’s name and addess! AN EMERALD RING. The new Lady Harcourt, who was married recently, says a London writer, wears an emerald ring that belonged to her husband’s mother. It was given to her when he was born, the intention being that it should be his engagement ring. This ring had made the bride superstitious. The reason is simple. A fortune teller told her. she was to be engaged to a man who already owned the ring he would give her.’ At. the time she thought this meant that her future fiance would have been engaged before, and was quite annoyed about it.

RIVALLING VENUS. “Modern women —especially AngloSaxons —arc 50 per cent, more beau 14ful and more graceful than the women if ancient Greece, so far as they can be judged from sculpture.” M. Keos van Dongen, the famous and fashionable Parisian painter, who is now at woik on a portrait of Alanova, the Anglo-Russian dancer star, expressed this opinion recently. “The Venus de Milo would hardly be able to get into a modern two-seater,” said M. van Dongen. “Women to-day are slimmer and better-proportioned, from the artist’s point of view, than their ancestors. In 30 years of painting I have learned that the most perfect types are to be found among British women and Americans. They are usually taller and slimmer than the Latins. Long legs and small feet and hands, not too large a head, and, above all, not too heavy a bust, arc indispensable to my ideal lyp >.•’ t SKIRTS AND PSYCHOLOGY.

LONDON, July 22. “The shorter the skirt the shorter the temper,” a psychologist told a representative of the Sunday Dispatch. “A woman wearing a long dress knows that a graceful walk is necessary to carry it off effectively. Graceful action compels a graceful trend of thought, and quieter movements mean a quieter mind, resulting in mental peace. Short skirts made women unconsciously quicker thinkers, resulting in impatience and hastiness.”