DRAMATIC EVENING WEAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 117, 20 May 1939, Page 19

DRAMATIC EVENING WEAR

There is a type of woman who gains much from a dramatisation of her personality. If she is wise, and she usually is in these matters, she will make an intelligent study of herself,

and accent both mental ana pnysical characteristics in her choice- of garb. This season's innovations provide amply for experiment in this direction. And it is noticeable to me in Paris that more and more women are taking advantage of them.

There is. for instance, the hooded coat or theatre cloak. It can have a definitely medieval air with its peaked crown, its swinging folds, and its demure single neck fastening. Again, it may be gathered to centre front with shirring (which trick, by the way, most definitely assists the slender silhouette) and hooded casually with a width that extends from the waist in a collar-like drape. EXPRESS YOUR MOOD. If you feel that primitive patternings of vivid peasant checks could best express your mood and the moment, there is nothing to prevent you swinging over to the Jacques Heim suggestion of plaid taffeta, full atid shirred on hips and bodiced with a candidly corsetish arrangement, made only different from our grandmother's line by peaks that come down on to the skirt, and buttons instead of enorm-

ous black hooks. The narrow fitted strip above that takes the place of the "chemise" is cut to dip to centre and finishes with a modest line of box pleating. The rest is merely a matter of shoulder straps—.which, by the way, are frequently bowed on top.

The picture frock that smacks of the stage, but also of loveliness pure and simple, is achieved to perfection, and with some originality, in a Paquin model Ox white net. hoopless crinoline folds of the skirt are pleated into a ribbon-line of a waist and inverted tuckings extend also up the corsage. Most charming is the decolletage that drops off the shoulder and is formed by a flat collar-like arrangement of ribbon, brooched to a peak in front. Scattered nonchalantly over the skirt are huge bows and streamers of satin to match. COTTON DEBUTANTE., Cotton net is used for the debutante. One gown is the very expression o! youth in its white cotton net crinoline, scollop-frilled with cotton lace in two large fiouncings. The corsage is fitted into the waist by rucked spacings of the net and a floral motif of I bluebells finishes at centre front the dropped decolletage of net shirring edged with lace frilling. Blue, also, is the tiny medallion worn in old-world daintiness about the neck on a narrow velvet ribbon. IN THE SKETCH. The model sketched is a Schiaparelli picture gown cut with simple yet feminine lines that should enhance most figures, even the not-so-tall. The skirt is both flounced and trained, and the brassiere cut of the bodice meets with central gathers to form a heartshaped decolletage. Again, straps are to the fore. Accompanying the gown |is the evening cap of velvet, perched cleverley and supporting a cloud of chiffon veiling that falls nearly to the knees. Gloves with enormous gauntlets are also velvet.