Bond Street Apparition.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXI, Issue 3570, 26 June 1903, Page 3 (Supplement)

Bond Street Apparition.

FASHIONABLE LADY’S DARING INNOVATION.

(Daily Mail.)

A startling apparation in Bond Street yesterday provided tlie first sensation of the early season. ■

Occasional glimpse’s of sunshine during the day had brought bqt many ladies to the shopping distinct. They were not exactly buying anything, as many of them carefully explained to the shopkeepers, but they were just having a look round to see for themselves whether there was anything on exhibition yet which it might bo necessary to buy later on. They had not quite made up their minds as to what were' to be the distinctive features of the new season’s fashions, and they looked dubiously at the displayed models as if doubting whether they represented the fag-end of last season or the early examples of the season that is about-to arrive. The hats trimmed with spring flowers seemed to look suspiciously like the hats which were trimmed witli autumn flowers six' months ago or with fur three months later. There seemed to be no very distinctive new models so. far on exhibition in any of the shops in The street.

Then suddenly into the midst of a street fall of ladies looking for a novelty came the apparition of a bonnet. A bonnet! and a bonnet worn by a lady most neatly and elegantly dressed, and still obviously and undeniably young. It is some years since a- bonnet was seen in Bond Street on the head of any lady under the age of sixty. , This lady was little, if anything, more than thirty. She descended from a well-appointed brougham, and was dressed in a costume of unexceptional neatness and simplicity. But she wore a bonnet, and a bonnet with dark green strings tied in a double bow slightly to the left under her chin. A tiny cluster of spring flowers adorned the “confection.”

WILL THE BONNET COME IN AGAIN? There was in its demurcncss and simplicity such an old-fashioned air as gave it an effect of absolute novelty. It caught the eye of every lady in sight. Was it possible' that the bonnet was coming, into its ancient realm again? Was this bonnet a freak or 'a portent? The wearer of it, accompanied by aii elderly lady wearing a fur-trimmed hat, walked along the street the cynosure of all eyes. There was no question that the bonnet was becoming to her. Instead of making her look old, it unquestionably set off her youth in the most charming fashion.

“I always felt that they would come in again,” -said one lady to another. “I hoar bonnets arc to be worn again this season,” another lady remarked inquiringly ■ in a hat shop. ' ' “I should not be in the least surprised, said a Dover Street modiste of whom inquiry on the subject was made, “to see a sudden sweeping revival of the bonnet. I have not seen the lady of whom you speak, but. it only needs some well-known young and pretty woman to appear in a bonnet to start a general revival of the bonnet. You see, cvcli elderly ladies have been wearing lials for several seasons, so that the bonnet has now the necessary element of novelty, and to a certain type of young face it is'most becoming.” “I should not be iii the least surprised to see a sudden revival of the bonnet that would make all our carefully prepared new season's models old-fashioned.”