LONDON AND PARIS FASHIONS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XIII, 31 March 1894, Page 309

LONDON AND PARIS FASHIONS.

PRETTY TROUSSEAU DRESSES. It is often difficult to decide on the various styles of gowns suitable for a mid-season trousseau. The following hints may help. Fronts and blouses will, of course, be wanted, and are most nseful. There is a delightful variety of these luxuries, without which no fashionable woman dare consider her wardrobe complete. Accordion pleating is perhaps the most popular style, and the accordion pleating is made of a pretty material, half gauze and half grenadine, striped alternately with white and a colour. These stripes look really charming when pleated in white and mauve as is that blouse which is illustrated with its yoke of lace, and the Garibaldi sleeves gathered into the wrist with a band of lace. A pink and white frilled crepon blouse looked delightful and tempting with its soft, large turned-back collar, out-lined

with asmall beading, and trimmed with a frill of Valenciennes. Scarcely less attractive was a bodice with a square collar, graduated at the bust to form a jabot-like frill, and to show at the neck a vest striped with insertion. The clever manageress of a smart London house designed some shirts in a fine French flannel, specially for wearing in Scotland ; they are prettily striped with faint colours, and have double turn-down collars and a simple box-pleat down the centre of the front, and would be useful in the colony for early winter wear.

An ordinary autumn dress, suitable for town and country wear, is illustrated in Fig. 2. It could be arranged in any of the autumn stuff's, and is trimmed with velvet and a light ruche. The lower skirt is full, as they will be where

an upper skirt of that nature is the accompaniment. The gown needs a tall slender figure.

Serge is pretty well played out. Even one of its most popular makers is now advertising hopsacking in new designs. One of them, the embroidered hopsack is so pretty that I send you a sketch of it for one of the trousseau gowns. The bopsack is brought out in several dark colourings. Navy-blue is studded with red and butter-cup yellow sprigs, embroidered in silk; the black has white sprigs, and the brown has yellow, also red sprigs. The costume shows a silk or satin vest of the same colour as the sprig, the high collar and small yoke being embroidered with the colour of the dress, as well as with that of the

floweret, in a graceful design. The idea is a happy one, for the bright embroidery, in excellent contrast to the rich

though sombre groundwork, relieves it of all monotony. The brown and yellow combination is decidedly stylish.

The dress designed for travelling is almost too pretty even for a smart bride. It is made of ivory faced cloth, with vest of rich silver tinsel brocade, edged with a narrow fringe of crystal beads. The zouave jacket, skirt, and sleeves are

handsomely embroidered in white. To go with it, a handsome dark blue cloth cloak lined with white silk was arranged. But this would only be worn when the bride felt chilly in the train or on the steamer. It would be advisable to change the white cloth for the hopsack directly the steamer started. Heloise.