DRESS NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIII, Issue XIII, 25 November 1876, Page 3

DRESS NOTES.

The " specials" at Home have been great on the ladies' dresses during the Ascot week. The Daily Telegraph says :—" If some pictorial record, however slight and sketchy, but honest in rendering a general idea of shape and colour, had been kept year by year, concerning the dresses at Royal Ascot, how curious a collection it would be ! On the whole it cannot be said of present modes and'fashions that they depart very grieviously from the laws which govern art and regulate taste. Extravagant they may be, but the principles of harmony and contrast are not defied or ignored as they were when Rowlandson and Gillray satirised with their rude, unmannerly pencils the dames of their day. It says much for the feminine costume of our time that if a caricaturist makes it the subjeetjof pictorial mirth he produces by the very exaggeration of his craft something fanciful, and in its way, not elegant. There was fancy enough, and some of it rather wilful and perverse, in the costumes paraded at the Berkshire Longchamps, but there was also a great deal of admirably simple and artistic attire. Everybody on such an occasion looks first at the lady who sets the highest example of grace in the becoming richness of personal adornment. The Princess of Wales wore a dark silk dress with an, amber front, and sleeves slashed with a broad stripe of the same colour, the body being embroidered with the' same in a very rich but also very chaste and harmonious manner; the ruff, that becomes her head, face, and figure so well, completeinc; gracefully the close outline of the neck. It is not flattery to say that this was the dress among all the dresses for a painter to admire. Striking among the costumes, not one of which was without its individual merit or distinctiveness of character, were a few that may be briefly glanced at. As prominently typical of the revived claes o£ art needlework which finds favour equally with Mr. Ruskin and with the South Kensington Pundits, there could not have been the least difficulty in selecting a pale bluish gray silk dress, with. ample train, skilfully embroidered with a. kind of Arabesque design, or what, having been styled ' Arabesque' in an age whose mistakes, are pardonable, is called so still, by general agreement of decorators better informed on the subject. Next to embroidery, the conspicuous varieties are velvet and satin; and it may be observed that even a few days Bring about a change of fashion, and that the lavish trimmings of ostrich feathers have begun to be relinquished in favour of lace. Peacocks' 'eyes,' however,, as savoring of Japanese ornamentation, are still used, either in reality or else wrought in fanciful imitation. A white lace parasol, edged with this gorgeous plumage, and trimmed at the top with broad green ribbon, served as an accessory to a train dress of striped green and white, over a green silk petticoat, the dominant colour being of one dark shade throughout. Then there was. an all but perfect Japanese dress of pale blue satin, covered with a black pattern of the peacock feather, or, what is the same in Japanese decoration, the oyster-shell. A dart green satin dress, with very much danker top of green velvet, ornamented in front with silver buttons down to the point o£ the stomacher, was effectively set off by white sleeves and by rich lace, marking the divisions of the satin and the velvet. Another dress, which was of pale blue and black satin, the black greatly, predominate ing, stood well out from- the trying rivalry around a toilet of varying yellow shades, from deep orange to the palest canary tint, and was much admired; and. simply charming was a plain yellow-striped dre'ss of some sort of delicate Indian texture, half silkand half gauze, with knots of black velvet in a line down the front, from the neck to the ground." .' ..... ■ - ■