WOMAN’S WORLD.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 979, 17 September 1881, Page 2 (Supplement)

WOMAN’S WORLD.

During the past few years ladies’ dress has been marked by the preponderance of neutral tints, which came in fashion after the fall of the Second Empire in France. Last year cardinal, a new name for an old friend, made its way into favor, and simultaneously with the rich red there was a revival of old gold. Now the brightest of colors are not too bright, and the ladies are as gay as butterflies. Conspicuous in the new craze is the prevalence of yellow in all its shades. The languid aesthete robes herself in yellow, carries a sunflower in her hand, paints the broad-faced blossom on the curtains, screens, and panels of her rooms, and emulates its slim stem. The daffodil, which has for years been banished from fashion s circles, is now high in favor. Whole fields are cultivated for the London markets ; maidens in brown wear buttonholes of doffodils ; Ritualists habited in conventional black for the solemn season of Lent carry Lent lilies or daffodils in their hands ; and churches are decorated with them at Easter tide. Mrs. Alma Tadema has painted the yellow blooms literally and figuratively, and her husband exhibited one delightful group of sunflowers in the Melbourne Exhibition. At a fashionable reception at an artist’s in London the draw-ing-room was ablaze with daffodils. Primroses, too, are in request; and the pale spring flower, with its larger and darker neighbor, ranks side by side for personal adornment and for house decoration. Brackets are filled with clusters of each ; rare old china in blue and white throws up the colors of the flowers, and from them receives a new effect by contrast. A large Indian or Chinese bowl, filled with masses of primroses and daffodils, is the newest table ornament. The delicate perfume which is so thoroughly suggestive of country life and pure air is singularly precious in the artificial circles of fashionable existence. It may be an indication that the aesthetic craze has nearly worn itself out and that the craving for better things peeps out in the desire for real flowers as ornaments, or that the extremes meet here as in so many phases of life and character. Certain it is that in England and France the aesthetic system comes in for a large share of public ridicule, which is generally a death-blow to any fashion.