Fashion's Latest Colours

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 196, 21 August 1935, Page 14

Fashion's Latest Colours

Frilly Necks , Linen and Velvet

WOMEN with small dress allowances must sigh for the old happy days when every colour in the rainbow—and a good many others beside—could be worn and accounted fashionable, or for the later ones when certain ranges of tints were selected for popularity by the dressmakers and remained in their proud position for months instead of weeks. Now, after a very short run, the fashionable colours seem to retire as soon as frocks and hats which feature them have been purchased, and something quite different in tone takes their place and is well established long before the new dress and headwear have seen their best days. A long list of new colours is posted just now in the fashionable dressmaker’s workrooms. Blue and pink remain in it, certainly, but the clear colours have given place to shadowy ones, and instead of turquoise we have a very soft shade of that lovely blue which Romney used when he painted women’s dresses and hats, and the grey-blue which belongs to love-in-the-mist. In the pink range the shade is much paler and less defined than it was, definitely pastel, but the particular tone which was named after Princess Margaret Rose at the beginning of the year remains though in a more or less “faded” version. It is, as the original was, much more rose than pink. For many weeks now green has been a most popular colour in the ballroom. . That translucent shade associated with running water has made the loveliest of dance frocks, for it takes on a new attractiveness in artificial light, and the whole range of leaf greens, from the pale lily of the valley example to the darker tree foliage shades, have appeared too; in velvet, satin, crepe and flowered silk. Now, however, that particular range of greens is slowly fading out and in its place comes sophisticated set of

tints, beginning with the green .of spinach leaves. It is so unusual that it gets more than* a second glance at the dress shows, and the good dres: maker is careful to explain to clients who are always on the look-out for something which will make them just a little conspicuous that it is only a good shade when the material in which it is exploited is suitable for it, and that a whole dress, or two-p : eee, of it would be unthinkable. It needs, quite deli ‘fcely, a dark background, against which to flaunt itself, and for that rea 1 n it is most successful when it is chosen for a blcuse to be worn with a black suit, a hat for the same, or as a little front or collar for a very dark coat frock. There are only a certa'n 1 umber of browns with which it will blend, and dim. makers do not seem to have discovered any other green with which it will associate happily.