WOMEN an d the HOME

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18380, 4 February 1928, Page 22 (Supplement)

WOMEN an d the HOME

MAYFAIR MODES. > __

‘ (By

DIANA DANE.)

A welcome revival noted at a dress •how this week was the “odd” skirt made of tartan plaid cloth. Since every woman appreciates the usefulness of a skirt which can be worn alternately* with any number of blouses and jumpers, this must be good news. The skirt is either pleated or cut on fold-over*lines, and it into a shaped hip yoke finished with elastic at the waist. An attractive feature is the 4 ’ ra gged”.edge, the cloth being ravelled at the hem instead of being turned up and stitched as usual. On the foldover model the edge of the overlapping part is also ravelled. Buttons and buckles are used as much as ever. One famous house uses a single jewelled button as the sole note of trimming on some of its most beautiful day and evening models. A large ruby-set button holds the draperies on the hip of a soft grey georgette gown; a sapphire button takes the place of a shoulder knot on a beige crepe frock, while a jade button on white chiffon and a diamond one on black crepe satin are other examples of the one? button-decoration vogue. Day frocks often suggest a back fastening with a row of tiny enamelled buttons running from neck to waist, the long sleeves being similarly adorned from waist to elbow. Occasionally a frill of soft, fine lace falls over the hand and is inlet up the sleeve to give point, as it were, to the buttons. Buckles —jewelled or plain—remain a feature of the modem toilette, whether it be for morning, afternoon, or evening wear. Even the simplest sports jumper boasts a gold, silver, or oxidised buckle, fashioned in the form of a greyhound, a stag, a horse, or a game bird. All-black and all-white dinner frocks share honours in ofie new collection. This particular house has a preference for black and white diagonally striped fabrics for day gowns and sports suits. The woman who likes the magpie colouring is, therefore, well catered for. A novelty that will be welcomed by the older woman is the neckband of tiny beaded flowers. On a foundation of net, lined withe hiffon, a perfect little garland of miniature flowers and leaves is embroidered in multi-coloured beads. The all-lace frock is charming! Dyed in various colours —violet, navy blue, bottle-green and brown for day frocks, and numerous pastel shades for evening dresses —it needs no adornment save, perhaps, the jewelled button or buckle already mentioned. The lace dance dresses are particularly adorable. The skirts are composed of frill upon frill of the dentelle on a foundation of crepe in the same shade, and the bod ices are quite simple, sieveless, square or oval-necked affairs, particularly engaging on a youthful wearer. For the matron, the back of the lace frock often develops into a sort of swallow-tail train, which falls to the ground after being caught in at the waist with an ornamental buckle. Brown, in all shades, is back. So is green, from dark bottle to a pale shade known as Nile green. Yellow is growing in favour, especially for evening wear; it is charming on a dark debutante ! And orange, a shade that has been neglected of late, is making a tentative bid for renewed popularity. [;>• \ MASCOTS. _ An elephant in ivory; a little pig in jade; a Buddha, or a Paris doll; of such are mascots made. They’re very much the current mode, as every woman knows, and guaranteed to circumvent each ill-luck wind that blows. Not mine to smirk with cynic smiles

at superstition’s vogue; for Luck is such an impish, queer, elusive sort of rogue that maybe it is possible he lurks within the tail of little pig or elephant, which find such ready sale. Yet I’ve a notion, all the same though touching wood the while) one 'mascot that makes Luck sit up and smile. It’s not a toy in ivory, or jade, or fancy kit; but something in the human soul that’s simply solid grit! A VOLGA BOATMAN. “If you want to cross, I will take you. I am going on the other side in half an hour.” It is rude to stare, but I could not help it in this instance. Fragile and slim, the child stood before me, her plaited hair shining beneath a rough sailor's cap. Her oilskins were shabby and very badly patched in s everal places. She could not be more than fifteen; probably less than that. And the Volga River is not to be trifled with. There are deep, treacherous places throughout its width, and we were standing on a spot from which we could not even see the opposite bank. ‘‘l will row you across,” repeated the girl. “My boat is all right. And”—evidently misinterpreting my hesitation, she added —“I will not charge much. Just what you can afford to give.” Then I managed to speak; Surely, you cannot row a boat across, and I am not much good with the oars.” Her white teeth gleamed in a little contemptuous smile. “Cannot row—say you? Why, I was bom on the Volga. I am not a bur-

lak’s daughter for nothing. Now will you come?” As no other boats seemed to be near, I took what I thought would be a deadly risk. It proved nothing of the sort, however. We got across quite safely, and even when we approached the opposite bank the child-sailor seemed no.t at all tired. Her strokes were masterpieces in their swift, sure evenness. She looked what she was in all reality: a Volga child, unaware in her simplicity that she was doing anything out of the ordinary. When I jumped ashore, she turned to me a little mischievously: “And } r ou said I could not do it?” “I must take it back,” I parried. Paying her, I added a little to the usual amount, but she shook her bluecapped head. ‘‘This is too much, Baryn. Father would be angry. He never took tips. Please—” and I had to take it back. FROM A PARISIENNE’S NOTEBOOK. A new buttonhole appears in the form of a silvered-leather flower, designed by a prominent French artist. Each flower is different, and reveals its real and authentic chic in the signature of the artist on the back of one of the petals. A veil of the finest net, the merest eye-shade affair, is the accepted trimming of the cheapeau that escapes the ordinary. It is a trifle, but a very kindly trifle, that casts a shadow over wrinkles and on a nose that has reached the shiny stage! Costumes for sun-baths in sunny climes are the latest dressmakers’ whimsy! Very delicate and extremely diaphanous, they are fashioned of thin white silk. The “cosutme” is, in fact, a sleeveless frock, decorated with rows of openwork, through which the sun can do its uttermost. This one-piece fragment of ephemeral chic is completed by a sleeveless coat of very lustrous white silk in a fancy weave. Nearly every dress of the sports variety has a monogram embroidered on it. But this trimming is no longer confined to the upper left hand side of the jumper. It has found many new and novel resting-places. One place for the monogram is in the centre of a hip yoke. Another is on the upper part of the left sleeve. Y.R. BLUES. (By Mabel L. Tyrrell.) The dictionary tells us that blue is a certain colour of the spectrum having the same hue as the sky. Not a good definition, for it all depends on the sk}'! As there are hundreds of sides, so there are many and divers blues — blue stockings, blue moons, blue Peters, blue bloods, and just common or garden blues. The last are, perhaps, the most difficult to deal with, and the indigo d}'crs are responsible for their origin. Indigo dyers are especially subject to melancholy. The perpetual atmosphere of the Heavenly colour is injurious to their health and spirits. They developed “blues,” which were evidently contagious, for they spread far and wide and became known as the famous blue devils. Blue moons are also rather hopeless things—it is astonishing how melancholy attaches itself to everything blue. There certainly was a blue moon on

December 10, 3883, but whether people got all they expected on that auspicious occasion has not been chronicled; we only know that the winter was exceptionally mild. There are few things more depressing than Blue Peter. This flag indicates that the ship is about to sail, for Peter is the British corruption of the French word partir. Blue was perhaps chosen for its efficacy in dispelling unseemly mirth at such a moment. But a little gleam of brightness is beginning to make itself felt among the blue stockings. They are not as gloomy as they were. The}'- are, apparently, waking up to the fact that those literary ladies and gentlemen of Venice, who formed a society in the year 1400, made a mistake in the colour which they chose for their emblematic stockings. However the original stockings appear to have affected the society, for when they arrived in Paris they became the rage of the lady savantes, and subdued them; by the time they reached London their mission was fulfilled, for until recent years there was no such thing as a cheerful blue stocking. Then the blue ribbon leaves us in a state of uncertainty. Shall we condemn it, or approve it? It is both meat and drink, but while it exalts the former, it rebukes the latter. It looks very mUch as if there were a sting in the tail of everything blue, because after a dinner cooked by the most accomplished cordon bleu we are liable to an attack of indigestion. Eschew blues of all descriptions. THE FASHIONABLE PATTY. Delicious little bouchees of hot pastry, filled with some savoury ingredient, are the fashionable entree at both luncheon and dinner parties just now. The “patty cases”—for that is what they really are—should be made of rich flaky pastry, the yolk of an egg being added to the shortening, milk and flour when it is mixed. A little “lid” of pastry should just rest on the top of each case. When cooked, take away the little lid piece, and very carefuly scoop in the centre of the patty itself a hole large enough to take a teaspoonful or so of the following mixture: —Chopped veal which has been stewed until very tender, chopped white of hard-boiled egg, and chopped mushroom if obtainable. The pieces should not be too small, and they must be carefully seasoned. Moisten well with a rich white stock, but do not, of course, add enough to make the pastry sodden.

Put the filled cases into the oven just long enough to make piping hot and serve immediately. A hall-cold patty is a spoiled patty.

A GOOD CAKE. This calce is very light and wholesome, and is suitable for children or invalids who find rich fruit cake indigestible. Put in a basin twelve egg yolks with twelve ounces of sugar and a teaspoonful of vanilla essence; whisk sharply for fifteen m.inutes. Work a pound of butter in a bowl with a wooden spoon for five minutes; add it to the egg yolk mixture and mix thoroughly. Beat the whites of the twelve eggs to a stiff froth and add these also. Mix well, and add one and a half pounds of sifted flour with two saltspoonsful of salt, mixing again gently but firmly. Have ready a plain, flat, buttered mould, about eight inches wide and three’ inches high; line the interior with buttered paper, drop in the cake mixture, smooth the surface and bake for one and a half hours; when cooked, turn on to a wire pastry grating and remove the paper. Mix in a bowl four ounces of glazed sugar with the white of an egg and spread this evenly over the cake; decorate with assorted candied fruits cut in small pieces. NOVELTIES IN LAMPSHADES MAKE THEM AT HOME. Really effective lamp and candle shades are expensive things to buy, but you can make them, beautifully and cheaply, if you are willing to expend a little time and trouble. Get a wire shade frame to fit your oil gas, or electric lamp. While the frame is on the lamp, lay some stiff brown paper over it, pin in place, and cut the pattern carefully, leaving a margin of one inch. According to the room in which the lamp is to be used, choose the colour for your shade. If a silk shade is to be made, all the wires of the frame must be covered. This is done by cutting strips of silk an inch wide, twisting thm round the wires and making the ends secure with needle and thread. Further to add to the beauty of a silk shade first cover the frame with a plain silk foundation, using the brown paper pattern to cut from. Pm it in place; then sew it to the wire. Over this pleat your final silk cover, pinning the pleats in place and sewing them with silk in the same shade. IN EXP E N SIV E PARCHMENT LAMP SHADES. The least expensive lamp shades may he made from good quality wall paper. Buy an odd piece if possible, unless you already possess some for which >ou have no use. Having selected a paper, lay the brown paper pattern upon it and cut the shade exactly to pattern. Now lay the shade flat upon

the table, with several thicknesses of white kitchen paper beneath it, and apply clear olive oil generously to it, using a brush or a wad of cotton wool. When you have applied all the oil the paper will absorb, roll it up in the kitchen paper; over this roll a few thicknesses of newspaper and put it aside for four or five days. The paper should be dry and ready by that time. Fit the parchment smoothly to the wire shade and sew it neatly in place with silk. Examine the pattern and, if necessary, touch it up with artists’ oil colours. Leave to dry. Finally, apply a coat of thin white shellac to the shade, and bind the frame with velvet or silk ribbon in contrasting colours.

“ OF NAME UNKNOWN.” There is a private house in Norway, full of most wonderful pictures. It has an octagonal room, its windows giving out on to the remote beauty of a fjord, and there hangs a portrait, until quite recently labelled “ of name unknown.” A very young girl is sitting on an open verandah. The face is quite simple, unspoiled by the elaborate coiffure of the late seventeenth century. A slender white throat rises above the billows of creamy-yellow lace, and a plain dark blue dress falls down in soft gentle folds. Because one of the tiny hands was painted touching a bejewelled fan, they once called her “ The Lady with the Fan.” But her face might give a cue to another name. The deep grey eyes have wonder in them: ‘‘They have put me on to this canvas, but I am sure I am not good enough for it,” they seem to say. So she looks at you, and yet beyond you into the blue-grey distances of the fjord. There is naive pleading in the young eyes. She wants to come down from her red-cushioned seat and go home. She is puzzled to know why she should be there at all, and she asks you to solve the puzzle for her. You feel you would be unkind if you did not help her. You also feel that the rosebud mouth, if it could open, would speak in no strange tongue, and you seem to forget that you are indeed far from home!

All this I felt when I first saw her. And when they told me her name, I suggested they should re-christen her “ A Pleading Girl,” though I never told about the pleading I had read in her

But when I came again, they had news for me. The picture had been cleaned since my first visit, and a few words had come to light in a comer of the canvas: “ Jane-Elisabeth, daught ” So, although she still remains “of name unknown,” the problem of her pleading eyes at least is solved; the pleading is for home and the dear simple things of home which she may not have found in her husband's country. THE GRAMOPHONE PARTY. A STUDY IN CONTRASTS. They were grouped around the gramophone. A mixed crowd. Emotional and phlegmatic. Youngsters and oldsters. A gargantuan supply of records served them all. And how illuminating was the reception accorded the various musical themes by the various human types. One made an interesting little discovery. Youth versus Age, per se, does not'determine the respective popularity of jazz versus classics. Not all the young people are devoted to the saxophone. Not all the oldsters salaam to the old masters. It is a question of temperament, not anno domini. Some of the most ardent enthusiasts who took the floor to the tune of “ Ain’t That a Grand and Glorious Feeling?” would never see forty again. And some of the faces that lit up, transformed, at the .opening strains of Caruso’s “ O Celeste Aida,” had the satin smoothness of adolescent youth. The last people, at first-hand psychological hasard, whom one would have associated with profound emotional responsiveness, kindled to an obvious heartglow when the immortal tenor held the gramophone stage. And on the other hand, the hectic temperamentalists, as who should say: “ I know all about that! ” —waited impatiently for the next jazz number. One felt, as one watched that temporarily unselfconscious audience, that music, more than all the sister arts, ministers to the human complex seeking escape from self. The phlegmatic entity, whether twenty or forty, responded avidly to the music-drama of voluptuous tenor and seductive baritone. The dramatic type, itself sufficiently dowered with “ temperament,” sought sophisticated relief from overfamiliar emotions in post-war travesties of immemorial themes. The twenties and the forties grouped themselves temperamentally; not in kinship of years. Entertaining becomes increasingly an easy matter for the hostess who owns a gramophone and who caters equally for sophistication and sentimentality. Instead of everyone being bored by the amateur at the piano, only half the company succumbs to ennui for the duration of the wrong kind of gramophone record.

NEW WINTER COATS

GUESSING?

Some houswives are very good guessers, and others are sometimes hopelessly “out” whenever they guess quantities needed for homely entertainments. No one wants to appear mean, and no one can afford to be wasteful, therefore it is often a worrying problem to strike the happy medium. However, let me help you by giving you a rough proportion of quantities of the absolute necessities for a modest little “at home,” or evening party. Tea. Approximately one teaspoonful of tea for each person and “one for the teapot.” Lemonade. A half-pint glass is allowed for each person. , Milk. Allow half a glassful for each person. Coffee. Four ounces of good coffee is estimated to each quart of water. Bread and Butter. Allow about four slices to each person if sandwiches are not included. Sandwiches. When bread and butter is not served, allow three sandwiches for each person. Cakes. One large cake, one slice per person. Of small cakes, allow three for every two guests. Tinned Fruits and Fruit Salads. A rough amount of these quantities is estimated at about four ounces per person. Much depends upon the time of the year, as in the hot weather the demand for tinned fruits is much greater than in the winter. Biscuits. Of these allow one pound for every five persons.

“ HARRIET EENNET ” SHINGLE.

Harriet Bennet, the beautiful and accomplished musical comedy star who plays the title role in “Rose Marie,” the successful J. C. Williamson musical comedy, has adopted a novel mode of shingle which has appealed to many New Zealanders who have met her. She has solved the problem faced by many women who want to have their hair shingled, and yet are not desirous of sacrificing their precious tresses. So study Miss Bennet's hair closely when enjoying “Rose Marie,” and you will note that, although two plaits of her hair are curled round her ears, the back of her shapely head is shingled. Luckily for her the hair on the top of her head is so thick that when she wants to wear her hair long she can do so simply by drawing the long hair down over the semi-shingle. “It’s quite simple,’ says Miss Bennet. “and everyone tells me it vs pretty and effective. It certainly is convenient.” The “Harriet Bennet Shingle” is becoming quite popular. The wear and tear of costumes in “Rose Marie” is considerable, necessitating a constant replacement, particularly of those worn by the gorgeous? ly-attired Totem Pole dance girls. The ravages of time are never alowed to become apparent in J. C. Williamson productions#.and the “Rose Marie” costumes are very quickly replaced when there is the slightest sign of wear and tear. And so, as in the case of the fastidious Pavlova, in order to maintain the high standard set by the firm, and from which they have never varied, the dressmakers’, milliners’, furriers’, and shoemakers’ bills mount tremendously. “Rose Marie” needs to be the moneymaker it has proved in Australia and New Zealand, for it is without rival among musical comedies in the matter of costliness of production.