Sleeves Are Of Supreme Importance To Frocks

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19124, 19 September 1936, Page 10

Sleeves Are Of Supreme Importance To Frocks

INTERESTING sleeves are the latest, note that has been struck by the arbiters of fashion, and this spring every frock will have them, and most of the evening gowns. On the subject of these new sleeves, a Paris fashion correspondent writes: "The dress designer gives, as it were, wings to his dresses by making the sleeves of supreme importance. This season he has decided to give a wide, straight shoulder-line and to set the sleeves in at the point where they meet the shoulder, or to carry them over that borderline in pleats, fins, and trimmings. There is no end to the ways in which a sleeve may be carried on to and into the shoulder. It may be padded like a doublet in Tudor times. It may look like a military decoration of enlarged proportions. Befi,owerod and bedecked, a short sleeve is a garden in itself. And all its gorgeousness is kept well up above the elbow and close to the shoulder to keep that line straight and lifted. The evening dresses, too, have sleeves —long, wing-like things of plisse chiffon or crepe, which fl.oat and play gracefully about the figure." She adds that raglan and the Chinese sleeve are no longer worn very much. Outcome of Mannish Mode.

This emphasis on the wide, straight shoulder-line is an outcome of the mannish mode in fashions which is extending from winter to spring wear. The broad, well-squared, padded shoulders of the male suit are the pattern and model, but they have been adapted to feminine usage, and, instead of plain, straight-hanging sleeves, we have the full, puffed variety ,of our grandmothers' day, combined with this modern shoulderline.

i Padding is not the only device employed to increase the width of the shoulder, for a puffed sleeve naturally increases it more than a closefitting one can do. The actual puffing can be contrived either by the use of shirring and tucks, or by a lining of net, and, according to the taste of the wearer, the sleeve can be drawn in either immediately above or immediately below the elbow. Puffed sleeves reaching right to the wrist arc not so much in favour.

A Fashion Highlight. / Where evening wear is concerned, the full, square-shouldered sleeve constitutes a fashion highlight. Women who have returned from abroad say that for evening, either the frocks themselves, ,or the coats or jackets with which they are worn, all have full sleeves. And now a helpful word for the many women who perhaps have a perfectly good floral evening dress, still de rigour in all save that it lun no sleeves. They can either match their material and have puffed sleeves [Hit in, or else have sleeves made ol material in a contrasting shade. It both these expedients prove impossible, they can procure an evening coat 01 jacket ,of some light material, such as chiffon or net, and give it the wide, lifted shoulders and the full sleeves. This will serve almost as well as would sleeves in the dress itself.