PRESENT STYLE OF LADIES DRESSES IN PARIS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 835, 25 July 1868, Page 4

PRESENT STYLE OF LADIES DRESSES IN PARIS.

The Paris correspondent of the Morning Post writes :—": — " If Paris holds the scissors of fashion ; if Paris dresses, and it may be just now, undresses the ladies of the whole civilized world, surely it is of universal interest to register the solemn decrees of fashion now and then. The winter is sufficiently advanced to enable one to judge of the turn toilettes are taking ; where they begin and where they end, and how they end, and how they are likely to affect the refined appreciation of the ruder sex. We are living in an age which seems to be reviving tho classical period in the history of drapery. You see pretty nearly as much of the female torso now as the Athenians did when the bas-reliefs of the Parthenon copied the vwdes of the Greeks so many hundred years ago, and when the multitude did not worship the drapery of a goddess only. Everything seems to me to get worse and worse in Paris. It is only a few days ago when some of the high clergy directed the attention of the police to the want of propriety in the ballet of the Chatelet spectacle. Either monsignor had been to the play and come away highly disgusted, or he must have been told that the ladies of the more poetical pictures had forgotten to put on that gauzy cloud of a jupe that Taglioni and all the great dancers of former days wore ; or that moiiseigiteur had gone and complained to his Eminence. 'No matter, it ended in the authorities, who in Paris look after our morals, remonstrating with the manager, by drawing his attention to the too decollctees deities of his heavenly scenery. The manager replied, ' Mon Dieu ! Monsieur le , look at the ladies of society ; they begin by the cpaules, my young ladies with the jambes. The fact is, the shorter the costumes the longer the receipts.' A compromise was effected, the jupe wa's restored, but even now I don't think any well educated English people would go to see ' Les Voyages de Gulliver' if they knew all. But let me see, I was gossiping about a more refined and virtuous society, the great world, and how the ladies are dressing this winter. By a little intrigue, and promising to mention a certain princess in the columns of this fashionable journal, I contrived to get asked to an evening fete, where assembled once a week all that is elegant, refined, and aristocratic in Paris. There you witness the duchess and the countess, .and the baroness imitating the costly toilettes of the demi. monde, arrayed like one of them precisely, in the very height of fashion. French ladies are proverbially remarkable for good taste. I hung about what I thought was the prettiest woman in the room, and finally obtained an introduction. The lady is of a noble Hungarian family, fair, with that dark brown reddish hair which is just going on to begin to be golden, but never shines out. I will tell you how she was dressed in my Imperfect mode of diction. Pale oval face, heavy eyebrows, bright bronze eyes. Small festoons of hair over the brow, imprisoned by a golden metal-band. A rose over the left ear. Let us go round behind, a c Bismarck c7buj)W)i.' A mass of twisted hair, in a sort of Laocoou agony, was decorated with insects (of course I don't mean anything impossible) glittering, gem-like beetles, from the Brazils. Three very long curls hung from the imposing mass, and could be worn before or behind, and made to perform, as I witnessed, all sorts of coquettish tricks. I learned later from a spiteful old lady that the whole of this great art-hair triumph was stuck on in a mass, and 'done in a minute.' It is very beautiful, thought I, as I gazed at the ladies' backs ; true or false, it moves the heart and pleases the imagination. Now for the dress. Well, there is nothing to describe till you get very nearly down to the waist. A pretty bit of lace on a band wanders over the shoulder ; the back is bare very low down, and more of the bust is seen than even last year's fashions permitted. Imagine an extinguisher's top cut off and placed immediately under the arms of a lady ; imagine it pale green with a gold fringe. Keep on imagining, please, and picture that from the bottom of the extinguisher there spreads a most spacious white gauzy robe with a train, all tulle so full of small puffs, and so wide spreading, and producing in action a faint silvery rustle. How it is supported, whether by crinoline, or some new inflating material, who can ever tell ? As a great philosopher has said, ' The wisest know little about women.' Now this is a toilette, or, as they are now called, costume, which has to be navigated about the room. The train will get into all sorts of comic positions if not properly ruddered. To bring one of these dresses safe into sofa port is a work of skill and daring. Amongst the ladies who gave such toilette and beauty charms to this brilliant society were many others in fantastic costumes. You may, as far as I could observe, dress or half dress, just as you like ; caprice has taken the place of uniform fashion."

Lady Pkacticai. Jokeks. — A very distinguished party were recently tho guests of the Marquis de Brevanno, in ' tho Chateau of Brevanne, in the neighbourhood of Trouyillo. The ladies of the party being bored, resolved, somewhat ungratefully in order to amuso themselves, to play off a joke on their host. So one night they placed a quantity jof flour between the sheets of his bed. At his | customary hour the Marquis retired to rest ; but I tho strange substance astonished him, and he jumped up. lie found himself as white as a miller from head to foot. A few moments' reflection convinced him that he was the victim of a trick. He coolly rang for his valet, made the mau scrape him and wash him and change tho 6heets. Then j lie returned to bed. The next morning he said not a word of what had happenod. Three evenings after, he proposed a drive to a small shooting lodge in the neighbourhood, where there was a splendid view ; and when he got there, he offered the ladies tea. The cake served with the tea was extraordinarily good, and the fair dames did ample justice to it. They declared that thoy had never seen anything like it in Paris. " Yet nothing would bo more simple than to make such cakes," said the Marqnis. " First take your flour, " continued he with all tho solemnity of a cookery book, " and then roll a man in it." — The ladies looked aghast. — " Yes, ladies, the cake is made of tho flour in which it was your pleasure I should be whitened the other night !" — " Horrible ! shocking !' screamed they. Then and Now. — Farmers in 1768 — Man at plough, wife at cow, girl at yarn, boy at barn, and all dues settled. Farmers in 1868 — Man at show, girl at piano, wife in satin, boy at Latin, and duel unsettled.