Black, All Black, and Nothing But Is the Smart Wear of the Moment

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 274, 9 February 1928, Page 4

Black, All Black, and Nothing But Is the Smart Wear of the Moment

TALKING WITH HER CLOTHES

The small interest women take in good tea, and nice crisp toast is realised when you see them in hundreds eating, oi; leaving, the most uninteresting toast, and drinking, or not drinking, the most unpalatable tea. No wonder, after such an experience, that they fly to cocktails, and have in their homes lovely little bottles of* harmful liquids with which to mix queerlynamed drinks. Yet they go to the smart tearooms of the town just the same. Is it to show their own clothes or to look at other people’s? It must be something like that, unless, perhaps, its just the herd instinct that drags them there. What is more they compel men to go with them to the stuffy places where washy tea and sodden toast is served, not as easily as they did once, I think,

but they still manage to get some men to sit in an atmosphere of tea and cakes mixed up with scents and cigarette smoke. I spent an hour or so doing the same thing this week, and wondered why I did it. when I remembered suddenly that it was to see what the other cats are wearing. Although it is summer and hot, it was a marvellous meeting place of all the blacks in the fashion calendar, relieved only in a smart way with tons of near-jewellery. It is wonderful how somebody, or many somebodies, or let us say, in the good, old-fashioned way, the Parisienne, found a way. to make black look so luxurious, so anything but black. She takes (or they take) dull black georgette and insets rows of pink chiffon and cute little frillings of Valenciennes lace, wears light silk stockings, shoes that look too dainty to touch the ground, and a hat that is either a good joke or a bad one—always a joke, anyway. Over this she slips a coat, perhaps of georgette or lace or one of the flimsy fabrics, or for chilly moments, one of fur . . . then that must be black too, and of the lightest possible summer weight. Of broadtail perhaps, shaved lamb or something as unnaturally domestic. Have you noticed how we have left the jungle and returned to the fold, the farmyard, the hearth ? Once we slouched around as tigers, leopards, anything jungle-like. Now we are lambs (shaved ones), and we have been dead born calves; we still are, sometimes, little black and white ones. Last season, while we were dead born calves we looked very chic indeed, though the name of the fur was detestable enough to make one unreasonably prejudiced against it. Next season we can be quite smartly among the goats as well as of the sheep sheepy. We will be shaved goats, too. And who will not be a rabbit, a white rabbit, a grey squirrel, or a ferret with a Russian name? It is all very like a game or a pantomime or something absurdly young. Yet the women who wear these skins are old of soul, I’m sure; bother! if I were a really good fashion writer I’d have said “pelts,” but then I’m not. I like nice clothes, I like to look at ’em; I hate^paying for ’;m, and I never remember the right technical names for them. However, what’s that between friends? In the evening there is less black to be seen than in the afternoon, and then, really the skirts are longer, or they look it. The picture dress looks as though it will become too popular to remain in the favour of the woman who never falls for mere prettiness when it is hackneyed by the thousands. For she who likes something more “tasty” as anybody's old servant would say, are the draped frocks of supple materials, black perhaps, that is made to have “presence” with the addition of some striking jewel or original rhinestone treatment. That woman is the one who can with the most perfect propriety wear a dress that looks as thought it had just said something naughty and had quickly pulled itself together. Always a little dangerous in her style, but never crude, Madame of the fastidious taste -will find a host of ideas in the new frocks for eventide wear. Lots of people keep insisting that the art of conversation is dead, but it might be nearer the truth to say that what women once said in words they say now in clothes. The moment a woman walks into a room you know by lier clothes something about her. looks what she is; it may be a minx, it may be a prude, it may be only something halfway between . . . itaisually is . . . but it is their clothes which teil tales about people nowadays quite as often as do their friends. The fashionable doll is not often seen. The badly-dressed nice woman is still with us, and long may she remain, because she does keep clothes in their proper place by reminding us that charm is not dependent on fashion, though the two together can do quite good work. The minx . . well, we all know the minx ... she may be well dressed, or she may have a style of her own, which is quite likely to be bad from a woman’s point of view; but there you are. She is a minx and fashion helps, but does not make her what she is. H.M.