THE LADIES' COLUMN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6213, 15 October 1881, Page 3

THE LADIES' COLUMN.

FASHION NOTES. ' A new shade of pale gold colour takes the name of "dawn." Gold bangles are the only jewellery much worn in street costume. Tournures are made more bouffant and back draperies grow fuller. Porcelain blue is a lovely shade for a cheviot travelling suit for a young person. Boating suits show great improvements this season both in designs and making up. All ladies wear outtloor wraps when in the street, no matter how warm the weather. Valencienues (imitation) remains the favourite lace for white-dotted Swiss and mull dresses. Ombre watered silks in new designs in the shaded and watered effects appear among late importations. Checker-board patterns in both wool and cotton materials are much used in forming parts of costumes. Pongee hunting jackets worn with black or coloured skirts make pretty and modest morning toilets at watering places. Sewing silk grenadine with square meshes, canvas grenadine, and black all wool nun's veiling are the proper materials for summer mourning. White dotted mull scarfs two and a half and three yards wide are used as searf sashes, to be worn in any way that fancy dictated by good taste directs, with coloured, black, or white dresses. Cretonne fans have received fresh impetus from the insertion of rectangular and oval ! medallions painted or printed upon them in mystic blue. Two or three of these patches are displayed on a single leaf, the side ones representing landscapes and the centre pieces a figure group, where gold chain stitch is plentifully used for outline.

The most delicate of the Spanish combs are made of the pale amber tortoise shell, and these in any shade of hair darker than blonde are exceedingly handsome. For blonde or light hair of any shade the dark cr mottled shell is very effective. These combs show many novel designs, among them being richly-carved oval bales, upon which are wrought very beautiful and delicate heads and other devices. Where it is becoming it is very fashionable to wear the hair in antique rouleaux after the fashion of the older times, setting the Spanish comb high among the coils of wavy hair. The fashion of wearing zouave jackets is rapidly growing in favour, and stylish young ladies appear at breakfast in the jaunty roundabouts. The prettiest are made of tinted surah or cashmere, edged with delicate lace quiltings, bordered with a j<tnliniere embroidery or cut in triple-pointed scallops, and finished with a button hole embroidery worked with pale gold-coloured silk. Others are densely covered with jet, steel, or rainbow beads of various sizes and shapes. For evening wear these jackets are made of black or white Spanish lace, the designs being outlined by cut jet or seed pearl beads.

A FAMOUS WOMAN' JOURNALIST.

All the readers of the Figaro know the clever woman who puts the signature of "litincelle" to the "Cornet d'un Mondain.' 7 Her true name is the Countess de Peyronny. She is a young and charming lady, amicably separated from her husband, and living by her pen. She is the daughter of Mine. Biard. a woman of letters, also formerly separated from her husband, the celebrated painter, at the end ef a scandalous adventure which happened under the reign of Louis Philippe, and of which Victor Hugo was the hero. I may tell you in confidence that Mme. de Peyronny regards Victor Hugo as her father, and that the great poet does not repudiate this paternity. Accordingly it is not astonishing that Mme. de Peyronny should have embraced the vocation of literature and applied it in its mundane relations. She has made for herself in Figaro a place apart, sufficiently well denned tor that journal to give her 30,000 francs a year, or 2,500 francs a month, for her daily chronicles. I have to tell you also, still in confidence, that these chronicles signed by her alone area collective production. Mme. de Peyronny receives communications from all persons who give soirees and from all the fashionable dressmakers, who wish that the toilettes madoby themshould be spoken of. Xhe great ladies who wear them are much astonished to see them minutely described in the Figaro, with which journal they have no relation. It is the treachery of the dressmakers. Various men of the world are also secret collaborators of Mme. de Peyroimy. One of the most precious for her is "M. Lucien Double, tho sagacious and witty historian, demolisher of Charleiragno, as Gambetta calls him. He has suggested to Mme. Peyronny to make a volume of the "Comet d'un Mondain," inserting in it various unpnblished stories and having it printed with charming illustrations composed by A. Ferdinandus. It will be an elegant book, destined for men and women.—New York Sun.

LADY TKICYCLERS.

Her Majesty was so struck the other day with the rapidity and apparent ease with which a lady was propelling a tricycle alon£ the Ventor-road at the Isle of Wight, that she had one of the same kind (a Salvo) ordered to Osborne, for the benefit of the Princesses. This must be a great encouragement to trieyelers, who hitherto have been rather sneered at by bicyclists and the world in general. Elsewhere we hear of a ladies' Tricycle Club being formed, with a special costume suited to the exigencies of the situation —something between the Turkish and Bloomer dress, a development, in fact, of knickerbockers, with a Korfolk shirt for the " body." Possibly those ladies will now endeavour to secure Her Majesty as President of their Association.

CHIT-CHAT.

The favourite costume of the Princess Mary is black and gold. In Germany pale yellow gloves are preferred to lilac or pure white for ceremonial occasions. The great attraction of a fancy fair at Portsmouth was an immense shoe, in whic'.i sat an old woman selling dolls. English fashionable dames and demoiselles have "recently returned to the very old fashion of wearing patches on their faces. At Cairncastle, Antrim, there lives Miss Margaret Bailey, who has attained the age ot 110 years. The record of her years is well authenticated. Among the elegancies in drawing-rooms are incense burners of bronze, in which pastiles, emitting a fragrant smoke, are kept constantly burning. Flower sermons are fashionable in England. The children take bouquets to church and in the midst of the services deliver them to the clergyman in the chancel. The Queen once spun enough yarn, from flax grown on the estate of the Earl of Caledon, to be woven into a table nankin, which was lately on exhibition at a fair in England. It is reported that the youngest daughter of W. H. Vauderbilt is to many Viscount Duppliit, sen and heir of the Earl of Kinnoull, and a nephew of the Duke of Beaufort. Fashionable life seems arranged solely for display and effect. At the recent wedding of Mr. Auriol Barker and Miss Cockertou, the bride carried a bouquet more than two feet in diameter. The seven bridemaids completed a colour-harmony in rich material, the tirst bridemaid wearing the palest shade of old gold, and the tint deepening, until it became a bronze in the seventh lady.

The possessor of an equable temper is to be admired. The man or woman who always has himself or herself well in hand, who is cool under all circumstances, who has absolute control of temper, we are always willing to trust in any emergency. But a person who flashes like powder touched by a lighted match, who loses control of himself or herself upon the slightest provocation, we distrust, and have a light to do so. In the battle of life, he who would achieve victories most keep a cool head. And this matter is largely under our own control. A woman's advice is generally worth having ; so, if you are in any trouble, tell your mother, or your wife, or your sister all about it. Be assured that light will flash upon your darkness. Women are too commonly adjudged verdant in all but purely womanish aflairs. There intuitions or insights are most subtle ; and if they cannot see a cat in the meal there is no cat there. A man, therefore, should keep none of his ad'airs secret from his TTife Many a home has been happily saved and many a fortune retrieved ' by a man's full confidence in his wife. It is stated that the first daring woman who learnt the art of hairdressingin England assumed the garb of a male, and thus deceived her teacher, who would on no condition have taught his trade to any but oue of his own sex. But it was Emily Faithful who originated the idea of female hairdressers in London, and who, in IS7O, persuaded the Queen to yield them her preference. Since then they have been universally employed, not only because of tho Queen's recognition, which alone would have establishedtheir poppuLirity, but ladies found it so much more conune iUfaut to receive their own sex into their boudoirs at a time when feshcMlle was the disorder of the hour,