MANTILLAS AND CAPES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 439, 3 December 1930, Page 2

MANTILLAS AND CAPES

In the most spacious of the Madrid thoroughfares, with chairs under the trees, I sal to match the holiday panorama unroll itself. They say that the mantilla is vanishing, hut on this sunny day seven out of ten of the girls and rvomen who filed past, laughing in the sunshine, had donned the mantilla. How gracefully they carried these head-dresses of black lace which fell in folds to the hem of their gowns. Since feminine heads are hobbed in Spain as elsewhere, I Wondered how it was possible to fix the immense combs from which the mantilla depended. I was informed that it is necessary to build up a structure of smaller combs to hold the gargantuan comb in place. However, this may he—and this is a mystery of Spain on which I speak n ’ilh no authority—the effect was truly elegant. IVhy, . . do Spanish girls, who are so exquisite in their mantillas, ape the Parisian mode and wear the Parisian cloche hat. How wonderfully, mhen they are not trying to be in the fashion, do they appreciate the artistic us’, of black- 1 Generally their robes were black, as their mantillas were black, though they might put a flower in their hair and sometimes wore coloured shawls. /Is for the capes and cloaks tha. figure so darkly in romance, there are still men who wear them. I understand that a Society of Lovers of the Cape has been formed, and is still flourishing. Its object is to preserve the cape. Let us wish it success!—Sisley Huddleston, in "Europe in Zigzags."