THE FASHIONS.

Patea Mail, 14 May 1881, Page 3

THE FASHIONS.

Children's dresses are made in simpler styles than formerly. Handsome silver jewellery is becoming as fashionable as gold. Ladies with large feet will be wise to wear only black shoes, since these give a smaller appearance to the foot than shoes of any other color. Among the latest New York fashions we note that Homan sashes are worn by little girls, and Scotch caps, with projecting plumes, by young ladies. The English walking hat promises, the New York Mail says, to be revived in rough and ready straw, and fancy braids for spring and summer use. Women who have dull light brown hair, colorless faces, and gray or blue eyes, should never wear neutral tints, fawns, grays, or drabs. They will look best in black, dark blue, dark brown, dark maroon, and creamy white. Where a colored shoe is used it must be very judiciously chosen. In the street no shoe looks so well as a black. In the house a shoe the color of the dress is more elegant. Labouchere suggests that ladies whom nature has not favored with fleshiness should adopt; loose rather than tight fitting garments and subdued rather than gaudy colors. Brunettes, with black eyes and regular features, can wear Spanish, Eastern, Greek, and Hungarian costumes. The eyelids amd brows may be blackened a little to add to the general effect. Ladies with delicate features can wear elegant Louis XV. suits, with powdered hair and soubrette dresses. Blondes may advantageously wear Russian, Swiss, and Italian costumes of the sixteenth century. On the grounds of some of the new cotton printed goods appear tiny flowers, bees, butterflies, and birds, all embraced in one pattern, bnt so managed as to require examination to discover the animated figures. A few novelties have been brought out in bonnets. Among these are capotes, made wholly of feathers. Sometimes a small flat crown is covered with a hen pheasant’s feathers, while the bird’s head forms on the left side a handsome ornament.