ORGANDIES—AND OTHERS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 8, 20 December 1933, Page 4

ORGANDIES—AND OTHERS

A MIXED ANCESTRY. 1 have been thinking about the organdies lately, and the niarocains, too. And 1 have also given a passing thought to the mousselines, not to mention the dimitys and the voiles. I have even cultivated acquaintance with the ginghams—-these -last, a rather shabby genteel family, though of late they have staged a. magnificent social come-back, states a writer in an Australian dally. They always remind me of Mrs. Gaskell and her “Cranford,” and ot my grandmother’s umbrella, which she always called her “gingham.” For in those days the ginghams were rather looked down upon, though they did come originally from France. It was said that they hailed from Guingamp in Brittany, and if you could not afford real silk, my dear, lor your umbrella, well, you had to fall back upon that cheap, nasty gingham. But the more showy mousselines, with their floral patterns rather tend to overshadow the ginghams. They have a longer pedigree, and claim to have come from far-distant Mosul, ill Irak, in the long ago. They were notcontent with the plain English “muslin,” and covertly called mousseline, thinking the French more high sounding. Long before Mussolini was heard of the Italian branch of the family called themselves Mussolino, a sort of cadet branch of the Mussolo. By intor-mariiagc, they added other hyphens to the family name, notably the mousseline-de-laino— un-twilled and multi-coloured—and the more famous mousseline-de-scie, gained when a cotton muslin married one of the silks. Then there are tho dimitys—poor but honest. They, too, have risen in the world. Poor things! They claim Greek ancestry — “di-mitos” (two thread) —but na one takes the claim seriously. Actually, of course, they are from Damitta, but nowadays you wouldn't recognise them, all dressed up—and floral! But all these fashionable fabric families are overshadowed at present by a nouveau riche, a vulgar ostentatious parvenu crowd. who arrived with the foreign-sounding name of organdie. Nobody seems to know their origin, but they have certainly made a great splash in social circles this season. It is true they are decorative and highly floral—some think too much so. I have heard that tho older families, such as the crepes (of China, you know) and the kolored knights (sky, helio,, or apricot) and the vieux rose floral dimitys, and even the shabby genteel ginghams, are privately planning to put the organdies in their place.