The fashions.

Observer, Volume XV, Issue 861, 29 June 1895, Page 14

The fashions.

Cotton velvets, with dots of silk, are inexpensive, pretty, and stylish looking.

Even if you gore your skirt closely 'at the hips, keep four or five yards at the them.

Nickel grey is a new colour.

Tinted note-paper is . again in vogue, and especially the light shades of blue, heliotrope, and delicate pink.

Silk waists are still "worn with wool skirts.

Capes appear to be more popular than ever.

Stylish hats are trimmed with leaves, and many of them are tinted with brown, red, or pnrple, and some of them with a bloom that has the appearance of a light frost.

Liberty satin is very pretty and effective for fancy waists.

Simplicity marks the handsomest costumes of the season.

Narrow lace is used as an edging to broad collars and cuffs of other materials, and it outlines revers, is used on ribbons, and alternates with stripes of delicate muslin.

Velvets are now popular as trimmings, even for washing goods, and the favourite shades are ruby, eggplant, amethyst, and -Russian green.

For summer, there seems to be a fancy for the use of folded ivory lace, any gown being enriched by a fall of such lace set on the shoulder at the armhole, and falling in front to the bust line, but not over it.

Gingham •will be worn as much as ever the coming summer, and the quality is almost as fine as linen, while the colourings are exquisite, and are warranted to wash.

The craze for open-work effects has attacked the shoes, and patent leather and glossy kid shoes will be perforated in various patterns, like the cloths, velvets, and silks so much worn.

It is asserted tbat lace will be more generally used next season than ever before, and it is made to combine most effectively either with straw or velvet, while it is brought out by the use of jet and steel ornaments, as well as bandeaux of jet or steel.

Various kinds of trimmings have been brought out for the blouse fronts, which are often repeated on the back of the bodice, and are freqnently carried out as consecutive strings of jet and cord attached to side trimmings of the same, between which they droop.

Fashionable jackets are cut both double and single-breasted, with lapels very high, or very wide and very low., skirts full and fluted, or with the fulness pressed down in plaits like a man's coat, and one is just as good style as the other, providing the jacket is short.

Bonnets, which are very wide in shape and worn well back on the head, and small-sized hats, are the appropriate shapes for this season, leaving the very large hats to come later; and featheis, flowers, spangles, paste buckles, lace and jet are the tntajnings.

Both day and evening gowns arc fashionable of black satins, and the skirts are usually plain. If trimmed at all, they must have narrow lines of jet or bands of embroidery on the seams ; and to make this sort of trimming effective, they must be cut umbrella-shape, with many gores, and very fall at the bottom.

Coloured straw bonnets are prettilyjetted, giving them a very novel effect, and one of rough green straw is studded with green spangles, and trimmed at the side with wings of jet, and a black aigrette standing up between, while at the back, just above the ears on either side, is a mauve velvet orchid, with rhinestone rosettes.

Lace butterflies, thickly spangled with jet, and in various sizes, are applied on satin skirts at regular intervals, and nestle in puffs in the sleeves with great effect, while in small sizes they are very pretty on black satin capes, set on a little distance apart all over the satin, which is trimmed on the edge a.nd at the neck with a ruche of pinked taffeta silk.

Black and white striped silks are well represented among the summer gowns, though the stripes are narrow and closer together than they were last year. Black lace and black velvet ribbon are "used to trim white muslin gowns, and one feature of this combination is an immense bow of black velvet ribbon, on one side of tbe front of the bodice, at the edge of the yoke, and quite close to the sleeve.

The Norfolk jacket is fashionable, both as a separate garment for spring wear and as a part of tailor gowns of tweed or homespnn. The three box-plaits of such jacket terminate both back and front in a full short skirt effect, giving a flare all around and doing away with the flat plaits below the waist. Tan-coloured cloths and covert coatings are made up in this way for wear with various gowns, and silk belting is then used for a belt, while with tweed the belt is made of tweed neatly stitched. The neck may have a high collar-band with a collar turned over all around, or else very small revers are turned over below the throat, and the back has a rolling collar, with the tapering sleeves very large at the tops and box-plaited into the armhole.

There is great variety shown in sleeves, but the mutton-leg shape, made very full at the top, and very close from the elbow down, and the close sleeve, with a huge puff, are the prevailing styles, while a pretty sleeve of black mousseline de soie is made by gathering the material into six lengthwise tucks about five inches wide, with an inch and a half between, these tucks forming nearly all of the puff, and standing out in pretty frills from the sleeve lining, to which the gathers are fastened, with the lower part of the sleeve draped slightly around the arm. Sleeves in many of the thin dresses are made of three puffs, of graduated sizes, the largest one at the top, with the fulness shirred several times below the shoulder, and again between the top and the second puff, which covers che elbow, and between the middle and the smallest puff, below which falls a deep frill of lace, caught np short on the inside of the arm.