FASHION NOTES

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 346, 25 July 1885, Page 10

FASHION NOTES

Unglazed kid gloves, in various shades of huff are still worn with, all toilets. Black or navy blue stockings are worn by small girls and "misses; dresses of any colour. Swiss girdles, pointed above and below the waist both in front and behind, are made entirely of jet beads. Byron collars of ' solid ' jet, with two scarfs of beaded net to tie below the throat, are made to wear with black dresses. In the evening, the fancy silk, openworked hose match the dress, and are beautifully delicate and varied in design. Small mantles are very much worn, made of two different materials, many of which are interwoven with silver or steel, and the lower part, or basquines, of surah nierveilleux lined with soiue kind of soft shot silk. The favourite colour for this lining is opal. For evening misses wear white mull dresses with shirring around the neck and above and below the belt. With this is a housemaid skirt tucked almost to the shirring, or else made plainer with perhaps two or three ruffles at the foot edged with -Valenciennes lace. A sash of striped or of watered ribbon complets this dress. I just mentioned a week or two ago that evening dresses were being made with coat bodices, on the tails of ivhich flowers, birds, &c, were painted in water-colours ; and now I know a little more about them. The jupons are entirely covered with little crossway flounces of cepe, and the coats are so long as to completely cover them behind. The fashion is not suitable for young girls, but they are wearing waistcoats of white or pale blue silk painted with single sprays or small wreaths of flowers. I saw one yesterday of greyish green with daisies onit, an d the effect was delightful. Plain cloth or buttons of the same colour as the cloth, and of the most unobtrusive kind, are now worn on the fashionable habits. Enormously large buttons are introduced on some coats and jackets. These are of the flat acorn form, but, when made of wood, bone, or mother-of-pearl, are quaintly carved in relief ; and the metal ones show equally bold designs in repousse work. For dresses, buttons are worn small, generally of the bullet shape. If of the coin shape, they are about the size of a threepenny piece, they are made in imitation antique coins, quite small ; and finding favour also are imitation onyxes, to be had in all colours ; for it is essential that the buttons should match the dress exactly. For combination dresses the figured or striped stuff is now used for the vest, across the lower part of the front and sides of the skirt, and down the middle of the straight back drapery, or else forming half of the bunched-up drapery. The plain goods then form the basque, the apron, and the greater part of the back drapery. A pretty way, also, is to put loosely pleated striped or blocked surah on the side of the skirt ; then have a long plain surah opron and straight back breadths of the plain goods; this is stylish in blocks of black and white with plain black; moire skirts with canvas or cashmere or plain Bengaline are also arranged in this way. Small bonnets remain in favor, but are slightly larger than those of last year. The only changes in shape are the narrow and short crowns used when the hair is dressed hi^h, and the more fully trimmed fronts, which now have a puff of lace or velvet, or else a small inside trimming of lace, bows, or flowers. There are also round and longer crowns for those whe wear the low Catogan braid, but the general preference is for the high slender crown that may be cut off square across the top, and is usually curved at the end to show the hair turned upwards from the nape of the neck and fringed like a bang, or else with three or four ' scolding locks ' curling below. Dresses for little girls seemed to have reached the height of practical elegance, and are kept stationary in the sage prevision that any change will only be a change for the worse. The sacque dress is everywhere prevalent, in which the active body of the child suffers neither compression nor restraint, and with which there need be no apprehension as to split seams. Whatever novelties there come in the shape of accessories, as, for instance, a velvet belt trimmed in the middle of the front, in place of a buckle, with a square of velvet set on straight, or set on cornerwise with two points holding the belt, a third extending below, and the other in the opposite direction above ; the dress will have the collar, cuffs, revers, etc., of the same velvet as the belt. Many of these little frocks have the , bouffant Moliere vest extending the former a bag below the belt. No Avraps are worn by little girls unless they are needed to protect them from cold. The apron drapery that evidjntlj finds

most favour for simple dresses is made to fall in two or three long straight folds down the left side, and to curve upward very high on the right, where it joins the back drapery; its beauty consists in the full long curves that begin on the right side in pleats sewn in with the belt, but disappearing as they fall into the folds on the left side. This leaves a large part of the lower skirt in view on the left side, which may be trimmed across with rows of galloon, or else have a lengthwise fan made of rows of braid. The back fullness is then quite straight, and massed in two large pleats, or else it is bouffantly puffed at the top, and hangs straight below. Almost all black draperies now cover the /false skirt from top to bottom, and are therefore closely sewn down the sides, no matter how much they may be trimmed there. Is is, however, more stylish to trim the back fulness across the end only ; thus surah drapery has a wide hem and three tucks across it, silk black breadths have a row of wide galloon like a border, and wool drapery has several rows of braid straight across above the hem at the foot. When the lower skirt covers the foundation skirt all around, and it is not necessary to cover it by drapery, the favourite arrangemeut of the back of the overskirt is to pleat all the top and the right side of straight breadths into the belt, leaviug a pointed drapery that is very full at the top, and may be allowed to form a single burnoose