WOMEN’S FORUM.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 456, 18 May 1932, Page 9

WOMEN’S FORUM.

Few Eccentric Fashions this Season.

BRITISH DESIGNERS TO THE FORE.

Thanks to the ascendancy of the British designer, there have been few fashions, so far this season, which can be described as eccentric. Paris, how ever, has just launched a new veil that has every claim to this adjective. Eyebrows of Eastern slant are painted on the fine net to make a sharp angle with the wearer’s own delicately-arched ones. These veils are intended to be worn with smart floral toques, and, edntrary to the ruling trend of the eye or nose veils of the day, almost touch the chin. LINGERIE LANGUAGE. It is not merely the masculine mind that finds itself perplexed by the continually changing language of lingerie Mothers, smart, youthful-looking women of the modern day, get quite a shock when the engagement of a daughter turns their attention to their own trousseau in a by no means remote past, when women had already said farewell to the simple nomenclature that was considered appropriate for the linen. To-day cam.i-knicker, cami bocker are the lingerie vogue by day, with nightie jamas as one of the variations of the night. But it is necessary to keep a careful watch on the vocabulary of thi outfitting departments for new portmanteau words that proclaim the latest shape and style. The passing from the linen era to the present age of silk has had an extraordinary effect on the social code in regard to references to garments by name when they were made lingerie. Merely to mention feminine undergarments of linen or cotton savoured of impropriety; when crepe de chine is the fabric they may be referred to without shocking the most conventionally minded. THE BEEF-STEAK CLUB. One of the most historic and sociable of English clubs, to which strangers are never admitted, is the Beef-Steak, which was started in 1769 and still occupies its original premises in Green Street, Leicester Square. In the reign of Queen Anne one reads of a small congenial company meeting once a week for a steak dinner- in a room at Covent Garden Theatre, and this was probably the genesis of the present Beaf-Steak Club. Anyway, the company was known a little later as the Sublime Society of Beef-Steakers, or The Steaks. Patronised by the wits and great men of the day, the society prospered until the end of the eighteenth century, when, for some unknown reason, it ceased to exist. Peg Woffington, the famous actress, was the onlv woman member. About 1800 it seems to have been revived, the meeting place being a coffee house off the Strand, which was, it is thought, the direct forerunner of the present club. A GIRL AND A DOG. Travellers in a tramcar were entertained at a suburban terminus this week by the sight of spontaneous delight on a young girl’s face when she greeted a rollicking black and white dog. It transpired that the dog had been lost and the scene was one of reunion. In her excitement the girl left her bag and parcels in the tram, and the good-naturad conductor brought them to her with a broad smile. That the bag contained the advertised reward (which the man was dog-lover enough not to take) did not seem to matter at the moment. Her excitement, no doubt, came from the fact that she had been thinking all through the journey that the dog she was going to interview could never be her own pet. She had decided that life was like that—the golden pot of the rainbow was never for her. But the dog’s quick recognition and yelps of joy soon balanced the scales. Luckily for her, the dog had strayed right across country, into the hands of one who understood the needs and ways of animals, and he was almost in the same prime condition as when he left home. Almost, for every dog owner thinks her own treatment is superlative. The girl babbled the story most enthusiastically to an inquirer who was humanly* interested in the scene, hailed a taxi, *v " dogs are not allowed on trams ”, and when last seen was holding an animated conversation in doggie language with her pet in the back seat.