Chat From Paris

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 134, 3 December 1938, Page 19

Chat From Paris

STYLES FOR THE SUB-DEB.

(By Marie Rodet.)

The young 'teen age girl provides no problem in dressing to her smart French mother. For over here styles for "sub-debs" are taken just as seriously as those for older and more wealthy women. The designers do all the worrying, with the result that there are many fresh and bright juvenile costumes about these days.

Simplicity is the success story in sub-deb styles. Young people are all for advance and improvement. They are impatient of the old and outmoded and like to be first with the new. So they favour forthright activity clothes; skirts that swing, jackets that fit, snug sweaters, and smart sporty shoes. Then they have something new in gadgets which may be anything from a novel belt to a Tyrolean.hatband or lapel ornament. COLLECTION OF BLOUSES. An assembly of blouses is an asset to the young and fair. The youngster

may help to make some herself if she is clever with a needle. A blouse of tartan, one of pastel silk, another of tailored knit jersey, and an essential is the billowy lingerie blouse of white muslin lavish with lace. These and some sleek hand-knitted jerseys in Shetlands and Angora go well with her costumes at any season of the year.

Like mother, this summer her

choices in suitings will be the conventional linens or the ultra-smart rej vivals of alpaca and gabardine. And la jeune fille will have her costume cut lon the latest lines too. For practical utility, suits as the Paris tailors do them, have longer jackets that reach to the finger tips when the arms hang straight at the sides. This is particularly youthful when the reefer influence has full play in brass buttons, welted seams, flap pockets, and the back, belted Norfolk fashion with aj vent. With this on sunny days would go j a sparkling chip straw Breton and j frothy white blouse. A dull day | would see it accompanied by a mariner's striped sweater and one of those naughty caps worn by French sailors, navy with white ribbon, and a red pompom on top. Sketched is a suit of the longer jacket category. You see it here with a plain gored walking skirt, whereas it might look even smarter with an all-round pleated swing skirt. PRETTY AS A PICTURE. In the evening the sul>deb looks her prettiest. Unlike her debutante sister who is a year older and already "out," she does not wear decollete or backless gowns. Finest lawns and handkerchief linens, pastel organdies, and the like, rich with lace insertions, are one of fashion's whims that would be most attractive for the junior miss, though not designed with her in mind but reclaimed from the past to flatter older women with that young, fragile, feminine look that is "le dernier cri" just* now. She may do her hair in the latest mode, but does it herself with curlers and patience, not with hours of treatment hi a beauty salon. And in France she uses a suggestion of discreet makeup on occasions so that she does not look plain and inconspicuous, but is already cultivating a dress sense and fashion consciousness that will stand her in good stead all through life.