NOTES BY "THE DUCMESS"

Observer, Volume 3, Issue 53, 17 September 1881, Page 8

NOTES BY "THE DUCMESS"

t" The Duchess " will be glad to receive from lady contributors descriptions of new walking costumes, boll dresses, &c, which are worn in Queen-street or at social re-unions ; also particulars of any very striking dresses worn in the Waikato, at the Thames, or in other to wns where the Observer circulates. All communications considered strictly confidential. Address — "The Duchess," Observer office, Auckland.] — Mr Mills returns to Auckland next month to fetch his bride Miss Burfc. — Worth, the renowned artist of dress is determined to bring in the reign of the crinoline again if mortal man can do it. Well, let us hope that if he should prove successful we may be always bo far behind the fashion as never to import it here. Esthetic dress, aesthetic art, and sestheticism altogether is now the subject of much raillery at Home, and doubtless it has been carried to extremes, but we may thank a3sthetics for those long flowing lines, for that natural curve, and grace which makes the dress of the present day the prettiest, as well as the most healthful style which has prevailed for many a century. In the name of all that is sensible, all that is lovely, let us never return to that dangerous, hideous, impossible combination of steel and cotton which once deformed our grandmothers tinder the name of Hoop, and ourselves under the name of Crinoline ! STREET DRESSES. — Mrs E>. Clark : Dress of grey lustre ; hat to match with white feather. — Miss White : Dress of brown cashmere, trimmed with brown stripe ; brown hat to match. — Mrs Angus Macdonald : Dress of dovecoloured cashmere, trimmed with dove-coloured silk, hat of silk to match with white feather. — Mrs Culpan : Wine-coloured rep, trimmed with wine-coloured velvet ; hat to match ; sealskin jacket. — Miss Nellie Lewis : Black cashmere dress, trimmed with black silk, cashmere cape, with bead trimming ; black bonnet, trimmed with red plush. — A Southern lady, whose name I really forget, causes quite a sensation in Queen-street, with a very striking dress of peacock green, with hat to match, and sealskin jacket. — The natural flower mania in Paris is at its zenith. White satin trimmed from bodice to skirt with red carnations is sufficiently conspicuous ; but one must draw the line at sunflowers. White tulle, a most graceful material, is again in vogue in France with bouquets of velvet flowers. — The English language has never been equal to finding a word to express chic. The Americans have now kindly supplied the deficiency by giving us the word " snappy." A dead-and-alive young man is said to have no " snap," whereas a bandbox turned-out young girl with white teeth, coral lips, pink dimpled cheeks, sunny hair, and white, soft hands, is described as " a decidedly snappy maiden." — It is the caprice of the day, we are told, for : ladies in Paris to have then* golden garter buckles , take the shape of some useful article. We hear of one lady who has one of her clasps made as a watch, and the other as a compass. How she manages to ascertain the time of day when other : people are present is hard to conceive ; or what ■ use a compass can be in such a place is a matter t of conjecture. — Here is a hint to elderly ladies who wish to grow young again. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts, it is declared, looks at least ten years younger than she did before her marriage. So a lady who would marry a husband, say 70 years younger than herself, might knock i 5 years off her life, and so in an increasing ratio. But there is the other side of the question — how much older docs he look ? — I should like to be sent to America as special artist for an illustrated paper. A new form of festivity is being rapidly developed in that region, and is called a Hugging Sociable. When held for a charitable purpose it brings in ten times as much as any bazaar or raffle. The prices are on a .rigidly fixed scale : 10 cents to hug a young lady between fifteen and twenty; 5 cents for young widows, one dollar for hugging another man's wife ; old maids two for one cent, and female lecturers free, with a photo thrown in. — At the marriage of Sir Stafford Northcote's second son to Miss Hilda Farrar, the most exclusive section of London society, including the Premier and Mrs Gladstone, were present. The bride followed the fashion set by Lady Brooke, and wore for her only ornament a single chain of daisies in pearls. The bridal dress was trimmed ■with Limerick lace. The bridesmaids wore creamcoloured dresses, much trimmed with lace. Each carried a basket of crimson roses and stephanotis, and wore a bunch of similar flowers on the shoulders. — Amongst the many curious toilettes, the Idress that excited the most astonishment at Ascot |was that of Lady Archibald Campbell. It con/,'sisted of a cocked-hat made of black silk; her // gown, of the same material, was very short ; and // she wore a black velvet belt across her shoulders, i; embroidered with the arms of the Campbell / family. The latter, it was remarked, much resembled a ratcatcher's belt; the boars' heads "fessewise, erased or, armed argent langued gules," looking in the distance, very like a large family of rats. — Says Truth :— " The crinolettes — those springy appendages which now thrust out the backs of some dresses like an animated bustle are simply odious ! Their use, of course, is supposed to consist in lifting the gown away from the heel, and so keeping the lining clean. Still, delenda est, not Carthago, but crinoletto, say I. A lady at the Eton and Harrow match walked across "Lord's" when the place was cleared during a shower. To the many thousands assembled her clear form was visible ; but what a form! She was young, may be fair and well made, but she seemed to have upon her the wobbling hump of a lame dromedary — not a vestige of that human outline which is said to be divine was left.