Paris in the Mirror

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 9

Paris in the Mirror

Writlon for "The Post" by Germaine.

PATHS 28th September.

Jupiter beguiled the tedium of Olympus •by painting butterflies' wings, but that was long ago. Nowadays the deity dispels his boredom —if we are to believe Heine^by gazing down upon the Boulevards of gay Paris. This pleasure-loving capital they say is a perfect cure for caffard, boredom. The river Seine rivals^ Lethe in washing away, all cares, "degouts," and "spleens."

For some Frenchmen, however, the Circean city lias little charm. Like Mahomet's paradise; it is "begirt with disgusts." The blase boulevardier, in Byronie fashion, divides society into two classes. The bores and the bored. He drinks without being thirsty, cats without being hungry, and makes love to relieve the monotony of existence. Un enriui chasso l'autrb. To "sleep away this gap of time,'' he goes to the theatre or to a boite de nuit, which ho dubs a boited'ennui. Ennui is of no country or clime. In his magnificent palace, at Zebra, the Caliph Abedelrahnian, wearying of' riches, honours, power, and pleasure, declares he can number but. fourteen happy days in a reign of fifty years. ■ Guy dc" Maupassant, a martyr to ennui, grew so tired of seeing the Eiffel Tower that he fled to Africa. Stendhal, in spite of his love for his beloved Italy, directed to be designated on,his tombstone, "I am dying of ennui." Three thousand courtiers and the splendours of Versailles could not prevent Louis XIV from yawning. . SUITS TO THE FRONT. Suits are without doubt amongst- the most famous of Paris fashions. The suits with waist-length jackets, having ruffled capelets round the top of the sleeves, offer anew and feminine wideshoulder line that appeals to the majority of women. Little capes and cape-effects on coats and jackets are going big in the most exclusive Parisian society. Afternoon coats have a tendency, to flare gradually toward the hem below a Princess line. With these coats, as well as those in tweeds, the frock and the lining.are of the same material, in a lighter shade than the wrap* ' :

The puffed sleeve has returned in every variety -with every type of frock that has swept Paris off its feet. Brightly coloured silk blouses.with balloon sleeves almost to the elbow, little blouses and frocks of ■ crepe de chine with baby puffed sleeves, dresses of fine woollen material with long sleeves which puff slightly at the top are among the favourites.' . '

Sleeves aro certainly not going to lose their, importance, but dressmakers have been racking their brains to find a way to make them less easy to copy, more_ difficult to vulgarise. Hence the decision to employ unusual ways of putting Jhem igy< §>lee?es jtepesnd for

their importance, as you know, on the way in which they are set in a garment. There is a new'sieve, by the way, with a dropped shoulder line, which takes away from the > importance of the shoulder, in conflict with which is a new square sailor collar which tends to widen it. . .