CURRENT FASHION TRENDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23931, 5 October 1939, Page 15

CURRENT FASHION TRENDS

IMPORTANCE OF WOOL (From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, Aug. 8. A bird's eye view of the importance of wool in current fashion trends is given in the presentation of hats and accessories organised by the international Wool Secretariat, with the cooperation of Paris modistes and designers. The new ideas formed an out-of-door collection in the roofgarden of the Club du Grand Pavois, high above the Avenue des ChamnsElysees. Through all the Paris Couture Collections for winter, 1939-40, wool is dominant as a material for coats, suits, dresses, and evening wear. In line with the style acceptance of wool by Paris designers is the discovery by modistes that wool in many different forms open up new vistas of inventiveness for hats that are colourful, novel, and amusing, practical and smart. Wool fabrics for hats are unusual, and the ingenuity displayed in the manipulation of wool products new tc modistes will be greeted with delight by the entire wool industry. The most dramatic examples of this are in a special collection of hats made almost entirely in knitting wool and unspun combed wool—soft and fluffy as it comes from the hands of comber and dyer. This is the first time that semi-raw wool has been used as a finished product—one more revelation of that incomparable alliance of French creativeness and craftsmanship that is so peculiarly Parisian. Five different and unusual kinds of handwork represented in this collection are:

(1) Entire hats made from fine knitting wool worked on millinery wire, and then clipped to give a soft velvety surface. (2) Tapestry work done in fine knitting wool on a net foundation instead of on the usual tapestry canvas. (3) Unspun combed wool (known technically as "slivers"), draped into toaues and tui'bans and then veiled with invisible tulle to prevent " fluffing." ...... (4.) Stripes of unspun combed wool plaited and wound into toques and brimmed hats.

(5) Wool yarn plaited and coiled for close-fitting caps and turbans, faintly reminiscent of eighteenth century perruques

Other materials include wool chenille, brushed chine wool crocheting, tosades of vari-coloured boucle yarn to border felt toques. Wool flowers provide colour on several of the models. A well-known French milliner has invented a new kind of sheep with coloured fleece—she uses dark red and blue sheepskin for high Cossack hats. One of her incomparable turbans is in flame-coloured thin wool jersey scarlet wool cord and tassels trim a black wool felt hat that flaunts a new line, hugging the head low in the back. Gay little turbans are made from skeins of bright red, blue, and green knitting wool.