FASHION AND COLOUR.

Southland Times, Issue 19458, 24 January 1925, Page 19

FASHION AND COLOUR.

DON’T FOLLOW BLINDLY. (By Penelope.) Fashion seems to treat colour in a most ( fantastic and erratic manner. Sometimes ! one colour, or one particular combination ’ of colours is extremely chic, while at the wrong time they would be considered quite ! absurd. Brown and black are, just now, ■ most fashionable. All tones of brown, as i putty, gold, nigger, are worn with black, ■ and they give a really smart appearance; yet at some other time than now, they i would have seemed incongruous. THE VOGUE OF BLACK. From time to time black has been greatly ■ in vogue, but never, perhaps, so much as at ' present. Black is really not depressing, because it makes such a splendid ground for i the most brilliantly coloured scarves and , trimmings we wear with it. ; No one knows exactly who it is lays I down the rules for the fashionable colours, but these new and unusual shades turn up ! regularly with the new seasons. It is even likely that a few months later it is impossible to obtain a particular shade that has been such a erww. At one time a peculiar orange ehade, called tango, wae very popular. It came in presumably with the tango dance. We had tango costumes, tango hats, tango trimmings and soon became thoroughly tired of the tango vividness. Just recently green became quite a boom with at times disastrous results; there would appear at a dance or theatre a crowd of intensive greens which clashed horribly with each other.

To begin wearing a certain colour merely because it is fashionable is ridiculous, yet people do, despite their colouring and type of face, and whether they are plump or very thin, wear these pronounced and popular colours. Fancy donning peacock green which fights all the while with the paleness of your complexion, just because it happens' to be at the moment fashion’s newest favourite! WHAT NAMES. Merely affixing “bright” and “soft” to show the depth of colour, has never been found expressive enough. Just now it would seem we are concerned chiefly with very mundane affairs. We have asugar-bag blue, pillar-box red, dead-leaf brown, petrol, electric, oatmeal —quite explicit. In more luxurious times we had powder blue, elephant grey, and turkish-delight pink. Of course animals are apparently indispensible in the naming of the shades. There are dove, fawn, beaver, mole, squirrel, mouse

and camel. When foreign names creep in with the fashions, one has to go carefully because one never knows exactly how they are to be pronounced! It is impossible to be right according to all authorities, some preferring an English rendering and others insisting superiorily on the foreign one. There is beige, eau de nil and ecru. The artist himself knows nothing of such colours!