LONDON AND PARIS FASHIONS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue IX, 1 September 1894, Page 213

LONDON AND PARIS FASHIONS.

LACE FANCIES.

BONNET for a middle aged lady—always a difficult matter to arrange satisfactorily—forms the subject of my first sketch this week. It is made in black velvet lined with black satin, and trimmed with fawn feathers and steel ornaments. Real lace is now very much worn, and makes an excellent finish to a dressy bodice. It is possible to buy now several pieces of real lace, from 8 to 12 inches wide, made about the length of

three yards or three and a half yards, which will arrange itself with grace upon a low bodice. These form berthes without it being necessary to cut them, and thus put it out of the power of the unappreciative dressmaker to cut the fine tracery in the more or less sacred cause of la mode. This is an undoubted advantage, because it makes the lace adapt-

able for several dresses, and one of these pieces may be cordially recommended as a desirable outlet for our generosity. ft is also much worn at the ends of full ties of soft coloured silk which reach nearly to the waist.

My second sketch shows lace used as a fashionable fichu. This is made in black net with white lace applique. My third sketch is a charming bodice of satin, with broad green and blue stripes and narrower lines of gold, with a square yoke outlined with a frill of the same. The upper part of the puffed sleeves, as well as the collar, are of black velvet. This bodice is intended to be worn beneath the skirt.

Some recent novelties are the patent canvas for bell skirts, and the pure linen fabrics which are beyond all praise.

They are now in readiness for spring gowns, and are about a yard in width. The coloured ducks display a wider range of tints, and have a thicker cord ; the deep crimson, light grey, and bird’s egg being specially attractive.

Lace is again much used in the pretty bridesmaids’ dress sketched as my fourth illustration. It is of the new cream French spotted crepon, trimmed with satin and lace. Hat of black velvet with ostrich tips. The bride’s dress was of ivory satin Duchesse with antique lace draped from the shoulder to the front of the dress, lace again covering the skirt, the train and balloon sleeves being of the plain satin. The bride’s travelling costume was of brown cloth, trimmed with brown velvet and pale blue moire, with hat to match.

There are two very ugly vagaries to mention that are to be seen, though certainly not adopted by the leaders of fashion. One is the starched coloured batiste shirt fronts

worn under jackets and boleros. There are so many charming soft silk, foulard, and mousseline de laine to choose from, that one wonders to see such stiff, ugly things preferred. Another mode, evidently tried as a novelty, is the way of waving the hair, frizzing it all round the face and bringing it low down over the ears. The few I have seen recalled to my mind the expression of ‘ an owl in an ivy bush.’ Those who are wise enough to know what suits them keep to the becoming Empire-Greek style.

Some of the Parisian shops are quite a revelation as to the beauty that artificial flowers can assume. There were heartsease, dahlias, and primulas, which might just have been gathered in the garden, and large standard trees of roses and huge baskets of laburnum. They were mounted for ball gowns in festoons, caught here and there with ribbons ; and long sashes of ribbons seemed to be kept in place on the sides of the gown by bouquets of many kinds. Velvet blooms are the fashion, and pink is intermixed with red. For millinery, velvet ro«es and small blooms seem to be most used, but they are so akin to Nature that the wearers would have easily been supposed to have been wearing natural flowers. One milliner’s bonnets are large and broad, but not high save where the trimmings render them so, and these generally took the form of an up standing bow. Large, round, flat shapes were covered with velvet allowed to fall in crinkled pleats, two ends of the material making ear-like bows at the side. A good example of this is a green velvet trimmed with upstanding

jet feathers, and two upstanding peacocks’ plumes ; while another black bonnef, of much the same shape, had two green bows at the side and was lined with red. There were no strings, and the three large erect feathers in front started from one of the wide buckles carried across the front. This milliner would appear to have ignored the fashion for small bonnets, and she has given a great impetus to the universal use of the long steel buckles, slighly rounded to the form of the head. She Is introducing large wings placed at the side of the hats, at the edge of the brim, and she mingles a

great deal of brown with the green in her millinery, fine of Jthe novelties here are bonnets made of pleated vicuna cloth intermixed with cloth of gold, the vicuna being shaded. Heloise.