The FASHION REVIEW

Putaruru Press, Volume VIII, Issue 323, 23 January 1930, Page 2

The FASHION REVIEW

BY

SUZETTE

There is no doubt about it, fashions have changed. Tf you do not believe it, look at the autumn hats. These were surely meant to complete and complement a charming mode. These hats are chic, but they are more than that —they are pretty. They are not hard or sophisticated. They are lovely and they have distinction. This will be the first autumn season in years when felt has not reigned absolutely supreme. Felts there will be, of course, but fabrics have really come into their own. Supple velvets, not the stiff millinery velvet of other years, but dress velvets, will make hats so supple that you can roll them up and put them in your pocket. The smartest fabric is broadcloth. It is young in quality, is a distant and extremely-distinguished relative of felt, and it is lovely both in colour and in black. The reason for these fabric hats is that they have soft brims and soft edges. There is something in the air to-day that demands that the face be more softly framed. There Is a great deal to be said about such hats. These brims can be draped by the wearer to suit not only the contour of the face but a changing mood. Hats you can change at will open up new horizons in millinery. Nothing has been so important for quite a long time as these softly-edged brims. They have been called into being because fashion is moving in the direction of softer and charminglyfeminine fashions. These hats of course will again in their turn influence dresses, coiffures, and, most of all, the general fashion o.utlook of their wearers.

Hats without brims are not without reason. It is perfectly possible that the right elegante will be seen some evening when dining or watching a play. Then look at the hats with tabs, ears and loops. .The tendency towards width on the sides below the ears is a very important element in thei hat silhouette. Even when brims turn up smartly from the forehead they are turned back again or else folded into a drapery that loses itself in a side movement of some sort. All this drapery and all these brims are combined with small, tight-fitting crowns. The small head is still accented, though not completely sil- I houetted. Not all fabrics are advisable, nor are they always well used. Velvet is a dangerous fabric when used for crowns that are overbraided and threaded or overshirred. There are some very ill-advised attempts to use very transparent fabrics for hats. The successful course of this new fashion all depends on how adroitly it avoids the shoals of fussiness, eccentricity and undisciplined attempts to exhibit personal taste and idiosyncrasy, and, above all, whether it keeps in the narrow channels of good breeding. Black of course leads. Brown, and brown and black combined, are much shown. Dark red is quite right if worn correctly, and beige and beige and brown are of course always classics. Colours are combined, even as high as thre'S colours, when red felt is draped across a tight forehead band of black and white grosgrain, or when lacquer red is added to beige and brown. These, then, are the details of the new hats that have to be seen to be understood. Even then, to the unobserving eye, not all the changes in the mode will be visible.