LADIES' FASHIONS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1970, 17 June 1880, Page 4

LADIES' FASHIONS.

[Prom the " Queen."] Short skirts for walking dresses are found to be so comfortable that many ladies are abolishing all trains—except for full drees occasions—i«,d are having morning wrappers made short enough for the skirt to escape the floor. These are especially pretty when made with the great clusters of gatherings that are now so much used to hold the fulness of the back breadth. A pretty model of this kind is of pale blue cashmere, trimmed with collar, ouffj, and, tqu:ire pockets of Oriental silk in palm-leaf designs ot many colors combined. At tho back, just below the waist, the fulness of the skirt is massed in a long and broad cluster of gathering. Another wrapper in Pompadour colors is of light blue camel's hair, with a jabot of lace down the front, with the lace shells filled in with loops of pink and blue satin ribbon. The edge of euch wrappers is left plain—at least, it is not trimmed with a flounce or with a border, but there is a very pretty fashion of cutting the border of the skirt into battlements, binding them, and placing beneath thorn a plaiting of the cashmere or of silk, ar.d occasionally below a balayeuse of plaited whi'e muslin and lace. One of the most elegant morning dresses I have lately seen is made of bordered camel's hair shawls out np for the parpose. The centre of the shawls is arranged to form the groater part of the girmei.t, while the borders trim the front, the sleeves, neck, and pockets. Tho printed cashtnt res, once so popular for morning robes, are again introduced. Among these arc a dark or pale blue, garnet brown, green, or black grounds vith palm leaf designs of gay colors. For flinnel morning dresses many prefer the fine white gauze flannel, and have it richly embroidered with white floss silk. Fur trimmings are very popular on both cloaks and dresses of satin de Lyon; cloth and velvet are also bordered with them. The single wide border, from 2Jin. to 4in. is the fashionable bund. Sable (both Russian and Hudson's B»y) and fisher tail are the riohest and mcßt coßtly, but beaver is much ussd in all its varieties. There is plucked, unpluoked, and partially-plucked beaver, also in its natural brown shades, or else colored darker brown; or tho jot black beavar, and the silvery beaver, made by sewing silver points, or white hairs, singly or in clusters, in the black beaver. Lynx furs, in light grey shades, are also in favor, and there is the lynx bluete, with blue tones. Fox fur'is also in great demand ; silver fox, with its long and downy fleece, frail and perishable ; blue fox, loss costly and very popular; cross fox, a novelty, with ito bars of dark brown across a yellow fawn ; silvery hare is another novelty; so is tinlitza, a grey black fur, the tips dusted a iilvery white. And so fashion moves—sometimes slowly, sometimes with leaps. The infinite variety of dress i 3 perhaps more in appearance than in reality, and serves a merciful purpose in furninhing employment to the majority. The dressof today is simplicity itself in comparison with the flitter and elaboration of what prevailedin iouis XlV.'a time; but in those days rich raiment was confined to a limited circle, now dreßß is nearly equalised by modern methods, and tho cheap distribution of good models, so that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish people by their dreßß. Elianb db Mabsy.