Breezes from the Capital

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 11, 1 May 1926, Page 7

Breezes from the Capital

Everybody travels: some for reasons of health, which is a polite word for dressmakers' bills, others because, in this weather, dash it all, what else is there to do? If the would-be voyageuse takes my advice, she'll seize upon her favourite toothbrush and her shingle comb, and catch the first train to Wellington that doesn't run too fast. No, the weather is not an intoxicating mixture of sunshine and moonlight with stars thrown in for good measure. Our sun (oldest inhabitants assure us that there really was a sunonce) is tucked up in a blanket of pearl grey cloud. According to Mr. Bates, it is raining, it has rained, and it is about to rain, world without end, amen. One day Mr. Bates will meet a genuine, authentic, 70-horse-power sunbeam: and then- he's going to die of heart failure, complicated by apoplexy. Nevertheless, Wellington is (saving Auckland's presence) a queen with dewdrop-diamonds in her hair. The rain's just that feathery, silvermisty kind which makes a spider's web look like a six-strand necklace of seed pearls. And in the gardens My lady walks on diamond dust, All meaner causezvay scorning; On diamond dust because she must. Every dewy morning. By the way, I hope you knew and remembered that, according to our white witches, the energetic female who gets up at dawn on May Ist and washes her face in maydew will gain a complexion of lilies and roses which will last her (without the aid of rouge and lipsalve) for an entire year? Wouldn't it be beautifully simple and inexpensive —if true? A good way to remember to get up at dawn, of course, would be to attend one of those dances where one doesn't go home till morning. _ We've been holding carnival in Wellington. Easter was the excuse. We had—all to ourselves— merry-go-round (why hasn't any doctor recommended merry-go-rounding as a reducing cure?), a band, clouds of confetti, cyclones of jazz and a trea-sure-hunt. At least, I seem, to remember learning about the treasurehunt from a large yellow poster, depicting a purple widow with seventeen emerald-green children digging up some extra-special brand of treasure. I rather think it was a Ford. Probably it got lost in one of our local pot-holes, and the residents just left it there until treasure-hunt time came along. Then, doubtless, it emerged quite as good as new probably better. PLEASE,, won't some good, kind, philanthropic New Zealander invent a hat which doesn't look as if somebody had sat, stood and jumped on it? Down here, there is just one entirely unbreakable and fireproof commandment among milliners, and that is that your hat must be entirely without shape. It has acquired the fashionable figure—i.e., no figure at all. One thing, though. You need never worry if (Wellington, remember, is windy Wellington) your hat blows away and is run

over by a steam-roller. Just jam it on, with a slight list to starboard, and everybody will murmur : "Look, dear! Quite the latest, isn't it? And so chic!" Personally, I'm longing for the return of the large hatthat stately edifice, surmounted by towering ostrich plumes and trimmed with cartwheels of satiny ribbon. One could tell us apart without the use of a microscope then. Dame Fashion's one of those peculiar people. In olden times, fashionable females (metaphorically

for possession of the largest hat and the longest dress. Now — hats have quite reached vanishing point, and our dresses .... well ask dear old Pater Familiasthat severe gentleman who seems to know so much more about the habits of the wild modern girl than his wife would like him to. By the way, the first Russian boot has been sighted on the Wellington horizon. I can't truthfully say that I'm infatuated with it. It is large and long and shapelesswhy, oh, why does everything the modern girl wears have to be as shapelesspardon, I meant boyish and willowy—as her own sweet self? To return to our Russian boots, they start at the ankle and reachwell,

speaking) scratched, bit and kicked anyhow, a good long way. One thing they'll settle the short skirt question once and for all. Nobody can possibly accuse the wearer of a Russian boot of over-much ankle. In fact, nobody, except one of those uncanny clairvoyants, could possibly suspect that she possessed legs at all. But, if we've really and truly tired of silk stockings and jazz garters, why, looking at the matter from a practical point of view can't zve wear Oxford bags, and leave the

Russian boots to mere men? Most men (jazz-sox fiends excepted) have a morbid craving for bootsbig, bulgy boots, the bigger and bulgier the better. And, as far as we are concerned, Oxford bags would look so much more feminine. Don't our sisters in the harem wear similar, though not quite such baggy bags? Are men to adopt every feminine perquisite? They already monopolise our smoking carriages and expect to know all (and more than all) about our clubs. I really do think that we ought to make a firm stand somewhere. . . But, of course, allowances must be made for masculine frailty. As the prophet puts it. a house divided amongst itself shall surely squall.

/~\UR War Memorial Committee started off with the very best of intentions: the public obligingly furnished the very best of sordid lucre: but the very best (or even the next best) thing in War Memorials is still far away up in the air. The trouble is that one collec- . tion of dear old ladies and nice old gentlemen think we ought to have a cenotaph: something that couldn't be mistaken for mere frivolity or utilitarianism. Another set firmly believes that —I mean —wants and should have a carillon. And the public? But, my dears, who are the public? We don't know such persons, and therefore their opinions, if they are impertinent enough to have any, can't possibly matter. In the meantime, mere unthinking women, with no ideas on art, go on tending and caring for soldiers' graves in Karori Cemetery. But, as Byron quite rightly tells us, "we must not think on themes like these." So let's return to the pomps and vanities of this wicked old world—such as the races at Trentham. I've done with horses for ever. Money doesn't make the mare to go— anyhow, not my money. All the effect that my hardearned ha'pennies had on the animal was to imbue it with a passionate desire to run round the course backwards, jump a fence and bite its jockey. But the little race-frocks were adorable. One would have thought, from a distance, that a wind had scattered a shower of autumn leaves over the course. Browns, all shades of red, including some that would make a graven image look alluresome, deep-toned pinks, and that friend to the clear blonde, bottlegreen, mixed as colourfully as flowers in a garden. The flared skirt, of course, is everywhere. Sleeves are beginning to look as if they were intended to mean something. Our ridiculous little hats are the only butterflies in the ointment. A little more and I shall appear with a garland round my head, like a South Seas lady. Ten to one nobody would notice, except to murmur: "Rather over-trimmed, don't you think?" DY the way, we're all sitting back *-* and fanning ourselves after our efforts to form a successful Randolph Rose Export Company, Unlimited. We (the good citizens of Wellington) held a Randolph Rose Day, whereon tired business men were reduced to perspiring profanity by charming young lady badge sellers. (Not that that mattered. Perspiration is good for men. Adam perspired.) The badges were a miracle of art. In one corner was a representation of the champion, apparently about to smack somebody in the eye. In reality, he was just sprinting. I'll bet Nurmi can't sprint like that —not just like that, anyhow. Nobody could. It's a physical impossibility. I wonder if Aucklanders share the curious fondness of Wellingtonians for "days"? Not fete days, nor holidays, nor saints' days— days when it is right and proper for every patriot to buy something typical of

the clay, and when the man who appears without a badge, buttonhole, or flag in his coat lapel is looked upon as austerely as if he had appeared in his pyjamas. There are Rose Day, Kindergarten Day, Poppy Day, and a thousand extra-special and extremely sacred days on which one is expected to show one's love for one's country by banging "saxpence." Well, it's all for the cause —though what the cause may be, nobody knows. BY the way, if, on strolling down the street (any street will do) you encounter a lady with only one huge, ornate, oriental earring dangling beneath her hat, don't go up to her and say breathlessly: "Please, mum, you've lost your earring—the left one —I mean the one that isn't left, that's right." Lop-sided ladies are the very latest. You brush your shingle severely from left to right, leaving a large, fat, sausagey curl under one ear. (Ears are quite respectable members of society nowadays.) In the same ear dangles your one earring. You may also wear a beauty-spot at one corner of your mouth, completing the over-balanced effect. Fashion hasn't so far decreed that you must wear a Louis heel on one shoe and a Cuban on the other. But you can, if you like. It's a free country. Anyhow, powder your little nose with dark powder (ochre has

made its appearance in Wellington circles), wear still darker stockings and a velvet shawl, and you'll know that you could pass along the boulevards of Paris without local inhabitants remarking "Regardez done. A mad Englishwoman." So hard to decide, in these days, just who is sane, isn't it? Sartorially, we are all delightfully mad together. Heigho! All the most interesting part of the year seems to have slipped away overnight, leaving us clutching wildly at a few torn-off leaves from an already dog-eared calendar. They were so pretty, those calendars, when they looked enticingly at us from among our New Year's gifts. Each New Year is a wonderful adventure until we find ourselves in the exact middle of it — and then, to our dismay, we find that it's just the same old year camouflaged under a new number. The truth is that there's no such thing as a New Year —we simply get the old one rechauffce — not very well rechauffee either. This is pessimism of the rankest —I think, mesdames, that the most appropriate thing would be for us to drown our sorrows in a Spode cup of the best China —two lumps of sugar, please. Give you good even, ladies.