Ideas From Paris Dress Shows

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 38, 15 February 1939, Page 14

Ideas From Paris Dress Shows

Low Cut Decolletages

(By Clarissa Lowe.) T’M writing this from Paris, where 1 every dressmaker having hurriedly and carefully erased from her collection some of the worst mistakes made in August, is showing mid-season clothes. These look far ahead and for that reason alone are delightful to see. But I find fewer ideas snaffled from the Naujhty Nineties. Hardly any which suggest the magnificent days when Victoria was a young and happy matron. What remain now are just charmingly vague suggestions of those periods which any modem woman can easily wear, more especially ’ * the evening. Though I prophecy that if the very low cut decolletages are to be a success, we’d better start for m fattening diet. For they’re in to stay, probably for a fairly long time. But if you heartily dislike a full skirted, low cut frock, and feel happier in the slim dress and trim jacket more suited to modem manners (an' our modem idea of walking) you can throw up your hat and cheer. After having neglected you disgracefully two months ago the dressLnakers have now made some delightful frocks after your own heart.

I saw one purple dress, with a sleeved bolero in the same colour which fitted so well that I thought it was cut in one with the frock. Beneath that was a pink mauve front tied on with a sash and cut fairly high at the neck, and this, wheS removed, showed a low-cut decolletage. It was just the sort of practical outfit which a business woman would choose for a cocktail party for dinner afterwards, and for a dance after that. It would easily go i »to a suitcase if she had to change at the office, and she could park the “spare - ’ parts on her chair without causing eyebrows -o be raised.

Then there are the new jackets which Jean Desses invented—cut almost like a man’s smoking jacket, but embroidered with sequins in designs like (a) checks, (b‘ tartans, (c) herringbone tweed. Sometimes the jacket is of organza, occasionally of thin wool, but it always matches

the dress. As most women love the glitter and magnificence of sequins, and as the ordinary sequin embroidered jacket is too lavish to be worn often, the new models are due for a big success, I think. Another thing which will please you is the beautifully cut, classically tailored suit for the day-time, complete with tailored shirt, and exquisitely made cravat. Try this sort of outfit with a straw or felt Homburg, the brim very much curled up at the sides, and wear a veil over your face and hanging down your back. I long to plunge into a discussion at this point about why there are so many strictly tailored suits shown side by side with ultra feminine clothes. It does seem to me that thL is a very interesting phase of fashion to-day and there must be a moral in it somewhere, if only I could find it. By the way, if you’ve been wondering whether the new up-at-the-back hair dressing styles are going to last, it may interest you to hear that I have been doing a little investigating amon,' the coiffeurs rt Paris. Now although the number of women here—ordinary women. not the ultra-ultra-chic type- who are ignoring this new fashion is enormous, all the hairdressers say that the style will remain and catch on, but most of them insist that the hard line at the back will have to be altered.

Gpillaume (Paris’ No. 1 coiffeur at the moment) has invented a way of cutting the hair at the back, starting with iongish hair at the nape and then getting shorter and shorter up to the crown. All the ends are loosely curled, so that all you do is to brush it up and it just stays up, with a charming suggestion of curl. He says that no woman can afford to risk looking 10 years old r and that's how to avoid it. And I feel he is right. I should not be surprised to see women ?v.tting their hair short again and curling it in clusters above the forehead and up th back, so that they get the same high line as they do now by sweeping it on top—just as, in fact, their grandmothers did when the bustle made its second appearance about 1830.

I send my mind back to the Molyneux collection which contained more clothes which I should have instantly liked to purchase than any other I’ve seen. For being a fashion expert is like being a “hand” in a chocolate factory. After a time the good things cease to interest you very much from a personal point of view.

If you have the requisite slim waist, Molyneux shows some delightfully neat little fitting jackets worn with finely pleated skirts in contrasting colours. And if you haven’t a slim waist, I think I ought to warn you that waists are going to be “front page news” in no time at all. So perhaps it would be wise to see your corset maker, or do gymnastics or whatever will reduce your waist line by the largest number of inches. When I see skirts gathered thickly just over the hips, and the waist pulled in by a wide, tight belt, I begin to wonder whether we shan’t be tight-lacing again in a very short time. It won t be called “tight lacing,” of course, but the effect will be much the same.

To return to Molyneux. He, wise man, has brought in again all our old favourites, but so much in line with 1938 —or in this case 1939—that they warmed the cockles of my heart. What a number of uses there are for swagger coats of a!" lengths and in all colours. How charming are those severely plain little frocks of his on which you can wear a very little, very good jewellery. And how elegant are his slim evening gowns, whether they give us a straight silhouette or flow out in a fullness which makes the bodice 100k —as we note with satisfaction in the mirror—twice as slim. All the same, I can’t agree that roses and chrysanthemums of a size to create a sensation in a horticultural show, are the best things to decorate an evening dress. No, I really can’t.