A London Letter
(From Our Correspondent.) Mayfair, Thursday, March 20. A great many smart people braved the wind and icy rain to attend the wedding of Miss Elisabeth Sperling to Mr Arthur Swan, at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane street, yesterday. So cold was it that a few flakes of snow were falling as the bride arrived.
I was charmed with the tiny pages and bridesmaids—there were no grown-ups. They looked as if they might have just been plucked from one of the flower-beds in the park. The little pages’ longtrousered suits were of canary yellow and the long net frocks of the bridesmaids were of the same fresh colour, girdled with pale green. They took their duties very seriously, rivalling even the choir-boys in the solemnity of their expressions. I wonder, by the way, whether the eight little choir-boys were chosen for their size. They were all unusually small, not one of them looked over eight years old. The bride’s gown was of softly-draped moire, and she wore some perfectly lovely old Brussels lace, which had been worn at their weddings by her mother and grandmother before her. There was an enormous amount of it, for, besides the long train and flounce, it made her flowing sleeves. “1 am positively shaking- with nervousness,” Miss Valerie French, who is one of Lord Y 7 pres’ nieces, told me yesterday morning. She has just joined forces with Lady Cecil Douglas and pretty Mrs McClintock, and was making her debut as a mannequin at their dress show. I must say she did not look like a novice, but then she and her sister always did walk well and have been star turns in numbers of pageants and tableaux.
When I looked round and saw dozens of pretty legs sheathed in silk 1 was not surprised when Lady Cecil confided to me that some of the French models of day frocks and sports frocks she was showing had been shortened. “None of my clients will buy frocks half way down to the ankles,” she said. “Two inches longer than last year is about their limit.” Among owners of pretty legs was Mrs Philip Kindersley, who had crowned her shaved lamb coat with fox collar, her beige stockings and brown shoes and champagnecoloured gloves with a daring red cap with a clip brooch in front. Mrs Drury, once Miss Essex French, was another girl there;
she gave her sister an encouraging pat as she passed her. The success—or otherwise—of a gown depends upon the way in which it is worn, and those dressmakers who can secure a mannequin who will enter into the spirit of a dress count themselves fortunate. At a recent dress show in Brook street I was interested in one dark-eyed girl who brought an unusual intelligence to her work. She was first dressed in a cheerful little tweed and crepe sports suit; she swung a golf stick, laughed, and walked from salon to salon with a free, athletic air that was wholly delightful. The suit was sold before she had taken it off! A few minutes later she appeared again, this time in a billowing yellow taffetas evening gown. The gown touched the floor all round, was- ruched around the shoulders and altogether charmingly and insistently Early Victorian! My dark-eyed mannequin walked slowly across the room hands folded before her and eyes on the ground. -She had parted her hair demurely in the middle and brushed it flat. I believe she would have dropped you a curtsey had you spoken to her! Of course, the frock had an instant success.
Hats, as well as frocks, have special names, given to them nowadays, and at a hat shop in Berkeley street the other morning I encountered the new tricorne hats, one of which was called “Galloping Dick.” A hat, intended for motoring was named “Step-on-it,” and a hat for the racecourse was “Odds-on.”
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Southland Times, Issue 21088, 21 May 1930, Page 12
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651A London Letter Southland Times, Issue 21088, 21 May 1930, Page 12
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