Gossip.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 976, 14 November 1890, Page 5

Gossip.

Stockings of silk with lace fronts are very fashionable.

Ivy leaves make very pretty little head, dresses, aud are more becoming than fruit.

Lace is much used for sleeves; it is mounted on a lining, and laid in rows from the shoulder to the wrist,

The wearing of tan shoes has been pronounced bad form in the best ciroles of fashion. This is as it should be.

Many large hats for fashionable resorts are made of coarse spotted net, trimmed with flowers, ribbon, or lace.

Cornflowers are much worn, and many very smart hats are shown in blue gauze or areophane and cornflowers.

Beautiful dust cloaks and travelling cloaks are of brooh6 alpaca, especially in that silvery grey which is peculiar to this material.

The Stewart style of sleeve, with its double puffs and perpendioular bands of material, has been resuscitated with much success.

All dresses, or nearly all dresses, are trimmed at the lower edge; this is the novelty at present. Shirts are less flat; a little more drapery is permissible.

It is said to be probable that Miss Mary Anderson will return to the stage before long. The persuasions of many friends have been brought to bear upon the gifted actress aud her husband with this object in view.

From London comes the information that the skirts of the frock coat are to be still longer.

People who carefully fold up their napkin after dining fcabie d’hote are usually ‘ waybackers.’

Many of the imported house toilets for autumn are ribbon-trimmed, and none of the ribbons are wide.

Black silk mull gowns will be much used for ball gowns, and, in fact, have been most popular all the season.

Furs will be more used this season than ever, entire garments being elaborately trimmed in this wise.

In the new hand-shake the hands are held at a level with the cravat or so.

In London the ladies of the nobility are wearing necklaces and bracelets made of all the American gold coins.

The gloomy announcement is made that ostrich feathers will be used as trimming on the winter dresses. Poor Flora.

It is becoming the fashion for men to wear wedding rings, and it is said that the fashion is increasing in favour rapidly.

Speaking, of leaving cards, Lord Ronald Gower in his ‘ Reminiscences ’ says :—‘ This is one of the small curses of modern society. I waisted an hour in driving from one house to half a dozen other houses, where evenings had been frittered away, in order to leave a bit of card-board on people who could not possibly care if one did so or not, or probably if they never see your face again.’

You may talk of the fire of genius, says Oliver Wendel Holmes. Many a blessed woman who dies unsnng and unremembered has given out more of the real vital heat that keeps the life in human souls, without a spark flitting through her humble chimney to tell the world about it, than would set a dozen theories smoking or a hundred odes simmering in the brains of so many men of genius.

Rubies have long held their own in the world of gems, but emeralds are gradually threatening to outrival them, and some beautiful specimens of these precious stones are introduced as the bodies of huge dragon flies with diamond wings and ruby heads—the whole forming a spot of colour dazzling in its brilliancy. A pretty bracelet of two gold chains has as a fastening two little owls, with their blinking eyes being a single ruby.

Bine blood, as it is called, is by no means the purest blood. There are some of the highest families in the land whom it would hardly be polite to remind of their ancestry ; the less said on that subject the better. If a man owes his reputation to nothing more than the fragrance that hangs about his ancestors’ name, one may almost say, in the words of Sir Thomas Overbury, that he is something like a potato, for the best part of him is underground.

The Baroness de Bachlieu, who was one of tbe most beautiful women of her time, and a great social celebrity in Paris under Louis Philippe and the Second Empire, lived to a very advanced age, and to the last was distinguished for her handsome appearance. For forty years of her life this lady never took anything but three dozen oranges, a glass of wine and two slices of bread a day. Her diet was never changed—a dozen oranges for breakfast a dozen in the middle of the day, and the third dozen at dinnor-time.

Sashes and floating ribbons are passde, the preference being for closer trimming, for narrow belts ending in a chou or a small bow with ehort ends, while ekirts have clusters of choux and straight bands and rows of ribbon forming borders. Velvet ribbon is much used for trimming light dresses of organdie or of India silk, and is chosen of the colours prevailing in the flowers printed on the light ground, as leaf < green and stem shades or violet and dark \ damask.rose colonrs.