THE ADVENTURES OF A FLANNEL DRESS

New Zealand Mail, 8 February 1900, Page 16

THE ADVENTURES OF A FLANNEL DRESS

Every dress has a history. I often thought what curious tales many gowns could tell us if they only had •tongues to speak with! Once I had a flannel dress. It went through strange vicissitudes. Originally it was quite a costly affair, as far as flannel dresses go. It came from a firstclass Bond street warehouse, and was of irreproachable out and style. It was made for me for the great Cowes week, and was carried out in. a pretty mixture of pale blue stripes and a pin-line in pink on a cream ground. I was the eldest- of a family of six girls, and (as often

happens in such cases) what was bought new for the eldest travelled downwards, in the family until every member had had had a share of it in one form or another. We descended gradually, like steps, a-s regards height. They called me Clarisse- then came Mabel, then Hilda, then the twins, Mignon and Meg, and finally Iris, who was called the Imp, because her initials ran that way. When I received an invitation from my uncle, my mother’s brother, to join his yachting party at the Isle of Wight for the first week in August, the question of clothes naturally came uppermost in my mind. I had nothing to wear in the way of a yachting dress. (It is a curious thing that no girl ever has anything to wear that will just- fit ohe occasion without applying to the dressmaker or the milliner or the tailor. , So I put myself in the hands of an unimpeachable modiste, determined to wear a gown,‘however simple in material,. that could hold its own in the way of cut and finish among the rivals which it was certain to meet at Cowes. My coat and skirt were a great success; the former was piped with paleblue. silk, and trimmed with a pretty, pear-shaped collar, and, to wear with it, f was proviued with a pale-blue silk skirt relieved with cream lace, and a suitably trimmed straw hat. Well, that is -how my flannel dress began its career—at Cowes during regatta week, when it- rubbed shoulders with the highest iu the land. I wore it that year, I wore it- the next. Then I had it cleaned, and it served its third season, and yet its fourth. The material was still as good as new, but the “fashion” of it wanted a little altering. I thought I would be generous, and hand ed my ten-guinea dress over to Mabel. Mabel was an actress, and a striped flannel dress was just the thing she wanted for a certain part she was going to play on tour. She unpicked my dress, turned it-, remade it, furnished it with a srrfart vest- and a velvet collar, and it really looked charming. The colours had not faded in the least. Mabel wore that dress through the whole of a ten-months tour, and it emerged from its travels quite freshlooking. Then Hilda wanted a dress, and the celebrated flannel was handed over to her. She cut the coat into an Eton, altered the shape of the skirt- to the newest pattern, added a new collar, and the dress was still good for several years’ wear. Hilda wore it for three summed, and it eventually came into possession of the twins. It was washed and ironed, the skirt was made into a part of a pinafore dress for Mignon, whilst cuttings from it trimmed Meg’s cream flannel skirt-, and made it wearable with the striped flannel Eton jacket. As the 'dress grew older it began its education, and after an existence of eightyears went to school for the first time. —“Woman.”