ACCESSORY NOTES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIV, Issue 20984, 12 March 1938, Page 9

ACCESSORY NOTES

White lilac and champagne ushered in Norman Hartnell’s spring-collection in London. Hartnell makes a good many dresses for the Queen and the little Princesses, and also designed the Duchess of Gloucester’s trousseau. The things noticed most among this collection of about 150 models were: Zipp fasteners on everything, evening dresses, suits, negligees and blouses; Enormous hats like plates to wear with summer frocks; Thin woollen evening coats lavishly trimmed with beads; Short loose little coats to match or tone with looming and afternoon dresses. The predominating colours were blue, from palest sky to navy, and all different shades of purple—violet, lavender, cyclamen, petunia, cerise, and pinkish purple, some of them rather ugly and trying to wear. Nearly all the evening dresses glittered with either sequins or beads, and were mostly backless with narrow shoulder straps. Three models which caused a buzz of applause were “white rose,” a very simple evening gown with a full skirt in white satin with huge white roses at the neckline, “Operetta,” also in white satin with broad bands of ruching over the full skirt which gave it a crinoline appearance, and “Eugenie,” in pearl grey taffeta, with a looped skirt like a Winterhalter gown, worn with deep purple flowers and matching gloves. Mr Hartnell has a great admiration for the Queen’s taste in dress. He said after the show that on his last visit to the Palace, she took him through several of the first-floor galleries and showed him pictures of early Victorian dresses which she wished him to incorporate in her spring wardrobe.