A MAGNIFICENT FLAT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19035, 2 April 1930, Page 12

A MAGNIFICENT FLAT.

Lord and Lady Winchester, who are obliged just now to spend a good deal of time in London, have, probably', one of the most palatial and artistic flats to be found in the wffiole of the West End. It has been likened to a corner of an Italian palace. There are silver gates to every room, beautiful renaissance tapestries hang on the walls, Persian rugs lie on the paved floors, and pictures and furniture are all art treasures. At a dinner party there the guests sit at a wonderful old refectory table in polished wood choir stalls which were once used in a Spanish church, and the hostess presides in a carved ecclesiastical throne resembling a bishop’s chair. Sometimes a dinner service of Georgian silver is used; at other times the plates and dishes are of gold. Lady Winchester’s bedroom, which has golden walls, boasts a magnificent four-poster bed, copied from a Cromwellian one in Hampton Court Palace, and a carved vestry door from a Spanish church leads from this room to a golden marble bathroom.

London has taken a little of the wind out of the dress sails of Paris by holding her first show* of spring fashions a month before the big French houses are ready with their models, writes our London correspondent. The British dress artists are delighted about it, for they have never, in the past, had the full credit for their designs. It is a popular supposition that what the British designers see in Paris subconsciously influences the work they do in their own studios in England. This week Revilles’—whose show it was—were able to produce the loveliest frocks, created while the designers of the Paris artists are still under lock and key in the ateliers of the Rue de la Paix. Not j only were the frocks and costumes of English design, but practically all the materials were British. Tweeds came from Scotland and Cumberland, lace from Nottingham, beautiful hand-woven brocade from Braintree, clotfis from Bradford, and silk from Macclesfield. The skirts demonstrated were still long, and the natural waist-line was featured on all of them.