IN FASHION’S REALM.

Otago Witness, Issue 3802, 25 January 1927, Page 67

IN FASHION’S REALM.

WEEKLY UP-TO-DATE DRE3S NOTES.

By

Marguerite.

You can always tell when style is at the acme—the great designers abroad fall back on the peculiar, and the risk is in becoming bizarre. There is this very high coming hat, for instance. With all crowns inclining that way, the latest, when it reaches us, will be of extraordinary height, and, according to a direct Paris advice, the hat will be worn at an angle, and that means more over one eye than the other. In which connection, as soon as I had the word, I asked myself would it be of more or less regular width, band to top, or conical, and now I learn that it will be the latter, and knocked about at the top. It seems clear that this has suggested something, and by an advice dated in mid-November I see that it is to be the conical crown that is so very conical that it will amount to a miniature -steeple, starting with the width required for the head and ending in a point. But, observe, not to stay that way, which would be exactly as women of rank in the days of the Plantaganets wore them. No, France is always conscious of her North African possessions, and so, having discovered that the chiefs there wear such' a headdress bent over two-thirds up, there is the fiat—the Arab hat with that kind of crown and a narrow flexible brim. Asserted to be the finest thing out for those on the look out for out-of-the-usual things, one is described in this way: The pointed crown of brown and green shot tissue, and the band of “gold” with a “jewel” in front, which I suppose would be a kind of brooch. Incidentally conical hats are no innovation. As regards Europe certain mountaineers round about the Alps wear them, and, as we know, it is the national shape with the women of Wales. Then, taking Asia, it is pre-eminently the shape favoured by the Koreans and of certain officials especially. The stately conical hat the ladies of the English Court wore in Plantaganet days Was sometimes two feet high and festooned with pearls.

Content us. ourselves, with the hats we have, and this is a rather pretty shape for the time being. The crown is just high enough, and negligently finished at the top, and the brim is what you might call a sane one, though I prefer to say

sensible. As to the trimming, enough is done with a ribbon, with a smart bow finishing a large rosette, the least bit suggestive of the rosette that goes with the cockade. But hats in these days are pictured mainly to keep in touch with what is going. * * *

There is very little scope for the artist when flowers are at such a discount and feathers at a greater. Shall we ever again see the picture hat, where no shape was visible at all—where either it was a flower garden or the plumes accounted for everything? In my opinion, never, and for this reason: Apart from the fact that it would not be in keeping with the semi-shorn heads we favour, it would amount to returning to the days before, with a hop, skip, and a jump, we escaped from the bondage of a thousand years. To make this clearer, there have been two great wars of emancipation—the one that freed the slaves of America, and the other, 1914-18, that sent the old hampering, disfiguring styles that, as regards volume, must have come out of the Ark flying for the women of all Christendom. And so there!

Which is an easy introduction for a hat built on sensible lines and a very pretty dress cut on artistic ones together. The hat speaks for itself, even though the scale is so small—a rather nice shape with a striped ribbon crossed by way of

the one adornment. And the dress, too, speaks for itself, or would if I would allow it. -As it is, I draw attention to the double-effect skirt with the semi-yoke band, and above all to the very taking front with the bodice —the draped collar with the inset.

* * * Touching which collar, and all of the same complexion, where do you think the designers got the idea. I’ll tell you—from the heraldic drape of the shield. Now you may or may not have an old coin by you showing this, but even if you haven’t you have probably seen one. The shield is shown within a curtain, and that same curtain, where there is a crown, festoons on top to two knots at the top side corners, and then drapes down the sides of the shield, and forms a curtain border below it. That’s where the designers got it, but if you ask me where the first heralds got the original from I shall have to say that I don’t know. But I conclude that it was from a casement curtain. The prettiest things often have the simplest of origins.

* * * A drape is sometimes employed in the way of the sketch -with the evening frock. This also is a pretty idea, but in addition it serves a purpose. When is a sleeve not a sleeve? When there is none at all, and whereas there was a time when no one would have dreamed of having nothing at all, these are different days, when the arm may be shown bare from the very joint of the bone within it. Observe the way the dresa

itself is embellished, and how this serves in pleating the sides of the skirts. It is a pretty selection, and as there was room for something else I have drawn a shoulder bow—the kind you pin on just over the front, but with something of it showing above the shoulder line.

A London note is worth giving just as it came: “Long ribbon tresses on boudoir caps are one of the latest feminine dodges for imitating long hair. A boudoir cap coming straight from Paris was made of. fine black lace, with a round top and deep bonnet back fitting closely to the head. From the back of the cap were hanging innumerable streamers of narrow ribbon in various colours, and of irregular length, which, when streaming down the back of the wearer, are guaranteed.to create a feeling of the long hair which women once grew on their heads. It

is a curious truth that, having achieved short Ijpir, a considerable number g£,

women are now spending a great deal of their time devising means for creating long-hair effects.” Are we to assume that anything is coming out of this for day wear outside—much later, of course? * * * We sometimes only get a true idea of the volume of a dress when' we engage a little puff of wind to blow it out. As in the case with the dress herewith—one of those sleeveless creations which some favour. We shall imagine it, if something in the silk line, dark and sheeny, and with that remark pass to the other dress in outline in the background, which is there for only one purpose—to again emphasise the sleeve that has been evolved from the cape. —