NEW COLOUR SCHEMES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19267, 2 January 1931, Page 8

NEW COLOUR SCHEMES.

“ UNRIPE BLACKBERRY ” AND OLIVE GREEN. There never was greater variety in colours and fabrics. There are certain shades in sports clothes that must always be there; the brown, beige, navy, and iron-grey range, which takes in tweeds, covert-coatings, nautical blues and Melton cloths. Plum, like Empire green, is largely featured for plain surfaced fabrics. A very new plum-coloured jersey has a dark red fleck, while a deep purple is mixed with a becoming dark mulberry. “ Unripe blackberry ” exactly describes a new oatmeal surfaced dress and coat. The dress has a little silk introduced in its composition, the slim, straight coat being of a similar shade in a heavier fabric. The loosely woven textures are much favoured in Scotland, being so suitable for the Northern games and at the few social functions when tw-eed is temporarily laid aside. Many French collections show Bradford suitings. Colours are softly mixed, but, as in the case of the French fabrics, they are more subdued than those of last season.

Plain colours are used with blended schemes in ensembles. For example, an autumn frock of fine plum-coloured stockinette will have a coat in a lightweight loosely woven tweed of the same shade but flecked with differing tints in plum.

Buttons are features of some of the new simple cloth frocks. A basqued bodice fastens down the front with flat cloth-covered buttons, broken at the waistline by a narrow kid band; the short basque below flares slightly. The buttons continue down the front of the skirt.

How succesful in the country are the new house-frocks, made in coloured nar-row-striped flannels, navy and white, red and beige, green and grey, and black and white. For the country these striped effects are exactly right. Those delightful large-spot designs are relegated to ultra-smart foreign resorts. Women should be careful to study fashion points in design as vrell as fabric, for just as the large spotted family suggests fashionable wear, so does the modest stripe commend itself to a welldressed country community.

Country chic is represented by short coats of plain velvet or velveteen, bound with braid and worn over wool frocks, with caps or berets of the same. Corduroy, or the thick gamekeeper's velveteen in dull medlar, or the hunter’s green is very attractive.

Olive-green looks very well made into a pleated suit in crepe or wool. Another revival is the mixing of pale-blue with this quaint shade. An American visitor wore an olive-green suit in a thick make of tussanum with a hand-worked shirt of pale blue crystalline, and a green velvet cap with a blue feather. However Victorian it sounds, it was extremely smart.