MY LADY’S DRESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23223, 22 June 1937, Page 16

MY LADY’S DRESS

A LETTER FROM LONDON Dear Phillida,—This is essentially a season of accessories—it is even almost easy to dress on nothing a year. Here is a recipe for sartorial success that is well within the reach of every purse. The ingredients: A flare for colour, a lively wit, discrimination, application. and a background suitable for all four. The result: a distinction and effortless style your wealthier sisters will envy. The background you in all probability already have. If you live in the country it will most likely be a suit—either with a short, fitted jacket, or a longer boxy reefer. If your home is in town, it may also be a suit, or it may be one of those plain, wool coats that go over innumerable little dresses. If you are lucky, it’s both. I know of nothing more useful for the city girl than a dark wool coat, collarless. and cut very plain, with widish shoulders, no revers, or very small ones, a slender waist that just meets in front and a gently-flaring skirt. Add to it a plain, black frock; lift both from obscurity by ingenious accessory changes, and you are mistress of as many moods. Now, let UP consider the accessories that work these miracles. I have

combed London for your information, and have listed all that were desirable, practical, and within reach. Of course, there are some novelties that arc only created for the few who can afford to discard mercilessly. These will never reach New Zealand-—others will come to conquer. High in the conquering class come reddish-brown leather and suede. For town mornings they are unbeatable The young lady in my sketch has realised this —she muffles her throat with a tan suede cravat, hand-stitched in black. She dons hand-made tan gloves, also stitched with black, and carries a serviceable bag to match Her Breton sailor hat is of natural straw and matches her plain wool dress. A boutonniere of cowslips is a refreshing divergence from severity. For luncheon she makes a complete change of “ face.” Her hat is a bonnet of Nile green, corded ribbon: her scarf is taffeta, Homan-striped in yellow green tomato, and blue; she wears green suede gloves, carries a green bag and treads in the same black shoes shown in my sketch. Notice the high cut and the clastic gussets in either side. She remains in the same rig for afternoon bridge, but before cocktails slips home to remove everything but the coat, emerging once morn wearing it over a little black wool dress that has a fashionable bleak neckline Her hat is now a flower-pot of black fell piled high with blossoms: her gloves are discreet black suede: she carries the fluted bag shown in my sketch; wears

satanic black shoes that climb high to the ankle, and winds round her waist the belt at the top of the sketch—gaugin pink in colour, it matches the gayest flower on her hat and is itself bedecked with bright blossoms. Suede and patent leather are the uncrowned kinds of accessoriana. We have bags, shoes, and belts of both, either combined or alone. Their most conspicuous hallmark is riotous colour, and their common denominator, the dressmaker style in which they are treated. In my sketches I have tried to give you examples of the careful casualness displayed everywhere. Take the bag and belt set at the bottom of the page. Hyacinth blue suede is gathered in a pouch and spiked through the top with a chromium bar to make one of the most aristocratic bags on show. The accompanying belt is merely a wide sash of the same material that can be manipulated in a dozen different ways. The tulip bag shown above them is a more studied example of good taste and high fashion. Round the top is clamped a jade bracelet carved in the inimitable Chinese manner. Tulip bags and fiat oblong bags that are fitted like miniature dressing cases are fashion firsts.

The Tyrolese belt sketched in the centre of my page is one of many. This one is white canvas and has hearts, flowers, and figures of felt pasted on it. These are easy to make and dashing to wear. You can match

them up with collar and cull sets, or if you prefer something less compromising, make your belt of plain coloured felt with felt Mowers bunched in front, and tie round your neck the Moral felt necklace shown at the bottom of the sketch. With a suit "background” you can do most of the above-mentioned things and more besides. Lunching on Sunday last at the Tudor Close Hotel, an enchanting inn at Rottingdean on the south coast, 1 saw Frances Day. the Mlm actress, wearing a French blue suit and over it an extra three-quarter coat of violet, yellow, blue and cerise plaid woollen. Round her neck she hung a cerise woollen scarf and on her feel were blue suede brogues. At the next table Phyllis Konstam (Mrs Bunny Austin) lunched with het husband in a cardigan suit of Burgundy wool. Her duck-egg blue blouse was light-weight woollen and had quilting in conventional design down the front. England is the recognised home 01 wet-weather fashions, and to-day she beats her own record with coats, boots and umbrellas that welcome the ram Coats of proofed velveteen are lined with rubber and cut on strictly tailored lines. Oil silk makes, enchanting umbrellas in the gayest colours, often spotted, dotted, checked, and striped, and sometimes with the small realistic animal and have grown 1 look for on on printed silks. April 30.