SHORT BRIDES IN FASHION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7801, 4 September 1903, Page 2

SHORT BRIDES IN FASHION.

EXIT THE BEAUTY OF FIVE FEET EIGHT. The standard of beauty is clanging. For years past the tall and slender woman, with grace in all her steps and in her every gesture dignity, has been the queen of heants, but this season it is the little dimpled darling who is carrying off the palm. As day after day fashionable brides are led to the altar by young scions of noble houses, the fact is made more and more patent that the little girl who is just tall enough to reach his heart is the choice of the bridegroom of the hour. Women are very wonderful beings, but even they are not capable of adding materially to their inches or of decreasing them at will. Oilier factor© are at work to meet the demand for fairy-like fragility. Fashion is, as usual, ihe principal aider and abettor of the scheme. The rage for what axe technically called full round skirts, flounced at the hem. and set into the waist by means of groups of pleats on gaugings (the dressmaker's latest word for gathers), docks every woman of quite two or three inches' apparent height. Little, bonnets and fiat hats lend them aid, and the broad scarves women wind about their arms, by describing a line round the figure instead of down it, very materially help the cause. Hence the hop-pole of five feet eight is able in appearance to approach the acceptable stature of five feet four, which is the one most women now prefer to possess, without much difficulty. NOT SO STRENUOUS. Another compelling cause of the change is the alteration that has already set in regarding the interests of the girl of today. The debutante of this season is not such a strenuous young person as her predecessor of past years was. She is distinctly feminine. Her embroidery frame is a. source of pleasure to her ; she likes to tend her binds and flowers; she delights in the concoction of dainty dishes when she has time, and in her stillroom brews many a potent beauty lotion from herbs culled in her own garden, following recipes that date many a long year back. Keen sportswoman though she is, she finds such violent exercise as golf and hockey detnimental to her pose as well as to her soft young beauty. She is the girl with honey hair, peach'pink cheeks, and sweetest eyes of heaven's own blue — in lact, she embodies man's ideal of half ai, century ago, plus the intelligence the nymphs of that day lucked, or pretended to lack, in order to satisfy the demand for stupidity that thon either did please or was eiironoously supposed to do so. The gospel of happiness is the modern girl's cult. Jest and youthful jollity make not for the gaunt angularity that was fostered by the problem novel and the problem play of the nineteenth century iv its decline, bub for a most engaging freshness and foit the " open mind " that is so charming an attribute of youth. These are the main incitements towards the reinstatement of the pocket Venus as this summer's ideal beauty and the slighting of stately Juno who has occupied the pedestal j long- 1