PARIS NOTES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 9, 28 February 1891, Page 15

PARIS NOTES.

As the lower animals in Autumn aie kindly provided by Dame Nature with warmer woolly or feathery coverings, so Dame Fashion thoughtfully opens the boxes and holds up to our admiring gaze more suitable raiment for the chilly season now approaching than that in which we have appeared these delightful summer days. Yet the warm weather has by no means gone. Witness the dainty sketch I now send yon of a gown worn last week by the muchtalked of Mademoiselle d’Alenzon. It was an exquisite robe of white silk muslin embroidered thickly with lilies of the valley in cream and gold, with their long spear-shaped leaves, a marvel of modern art in embroidery. The corsage as seen in sketch was attached by a narrow gold galloon around the waist. The very chic hat that rested on the

young lady’s cropped and curled hair was of Tuscan lace straw, surmounted by marvellously beautiful turquoise-blue feathers. She wore an 1830 chain with pearls, with gold purse attached. This would made a beautiful soiree gown. Whilst I think of it I may mention that Princess Victoria, whose exquisite tiousseau still lingers even in Parisian memories, has twelve dozen full sets of everything in the line of underclothing and lingerie of all sorts. I should think they would last her a decade. Several of the new autumn woollens have appeared, and some of them are exceedingly cAtc and pretty, though, on the whole, there is not much difference between this season’s materials and last season’s. Checks large and small, and stripes plain and irregular, will be much worn, and selfcolours are always well worn, but the newest mateiial of all is a rough home-spun or woollen, with raised spots of velvet or astrachan scattered over the material. Tiny broken stripes of astrachan are also to be seen on a home-spun or tweed ground. In colours, the mauve and heliotrope tints to long popular are giving way almost completely to shades of brown and grey, which are to be the colours this winter. Brown in reddish tints, such as bark-brown, coffee and bronze, and in yellow tints, as tabac, as well as the ever useful seal-brown, heads the list of fashionable tints, then comes grey—from silver grey to.dark platinum grey, this latter tint being especially becoming to bright English complexions and golden brown hair. Heliotrope, when seen, is more of a daik mulberry shade, and greens are principally metallic and tea-greens, while blues are more of a greenish shade, and the peacock and gobelin shades that contain so much beauty of colouring. As regards fashions for the future, the plain skirts are to continue fashionable, draperies being almost if not quite tabooed. On dit, however, that theie is to be a revival of hoops in a modified form, not really hoops, but some of the newest dresses are being made so as to flow out just round the feet in a bell shape ; but I don't think, somehow, that this idea will gain ground very much, bleeves will most probably continue to be of different material to the bodice—but not ot widely-contrasting colour—ami are to be of all sorts of quaint and fantastic shapes. A very pretty and quite new gown which was shown to me a couple ot days

ago was of seal-l rown cloth, the corselet and skii t all in one, gored to the figure, and fastening under the right arm, over a bodice and sleeves of brocade of the red of an unripe blackberry. The corselet was open in front at the top, just like a corselet left unfastened from the waist up, and the effect of this, over the folds of brocade, was very charming. Another gown was of biscuit-coloured cloth, half moon disc embroidered on it in bronze brown silk. The skirt had a border of large rings and discs in decreasing sizes, and the bodice was made with revers above and straps or tabs below the bust in bronze brown velvet, holding in place a full waistcoat of biscuit coloured surah. The high collar and the cuffs were also of bronze velvet.

Just no* a very pretty fashion obtains of wearing dressy little bretelles or braces over a plain gown in the house. These are either of lace, gathered softly on a net foundation, or of soft silk or ribbon, or pinked out cloth, but in all cases they are broad on the shoulder, anil putted up to form a sort of epaulet, or in the case of the cloth bretellcs with a ribbon rosette on the shoulders, and narrowing down to almost nothing. Another little dressy arrangement for home wear is a soft thick ruttie of tulle or chiffon tied at the back or on one shoulder with a bow of ribbon ami long streamers.

Heloise.