Summer Millinery

Southland Times, Issue 21220, 22 October 1930, Page 12

Summer Millinery

Summer hats are no longer a mystery to you in New Zealand, although you may not yet. have had weather sufficiently fine to tempt you to wear them, and I have been wondering whether the Homo buyers for your country included in their collection simliar models to those which astounded us at the beginning of the seasons.

Hat fashions reached their zenith of spectacular extravagance this summer. Modes reminiscent of the pre-war seasons of 1912 and 1913 were planned by the milliners of London - and Paris.

Gasps of astonishment giving way to little claps of approval were heard from the women who attended a “hat party” at a Berkeley street salon when mannequins appeared in hats fully a yard across, stretching from shoulder to shoulder, and in some cases a little, further.

Of fine organdy muslin in white, black, flame colour, apple green and powder-blue, with tiny crowns fitting snugly to still shingled heads, these gigantic hats were trimmed with long ostrich feathers to tone either 'under the brim and caressing the face, or dropping from one side of the brim and falling down the .side in Cavalier fashion.

One model, entitled “Romance,” of black muslin, was trimmed with a single bunch of white violets posed just above one ear. For a debutante, girlish and demure in its simplicity was a white muslin hat trimmed with a length of blue ribbon and a single pink rose-bud that almost .completely hid what one felt ought to be the young girl’s blushes and simpers. A ringlet straying down one shoulder -was all that was needed to complete the mid-Victorian resemblance.

The largest hat of all, called “Little Mexican,” a stiff model of hand-woven Leghorn straw which would scarcely get through an ordinary doorway, was intended for beach wear with the new Lido suits. These suits consist of a silk and wool skintight “vest” cut like a man’s, to which are buttoned loose linen trousers, and over which is worn a three-quarter length coat.

For wear in London there were small folded turbans with coquettish scarves knotted at one side of printed chiffon to match chiffon dresses, floppy little linen hats tilted to one side and adorned with bunches of violets and daisies, and shantung and crepe-de-chene “bonnets” for sports wear, to be worn with curls and dimples and a roguish air.