FASHIONS FANTASIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 67, 19 November 1913, Page 5

FASHIONS FANTASIES.

THAT LEAVE ONE GASPING. 'i V ' ■' . ! !. . _ Writes “H.W.” in the Sydney Daily Telegraph; “What with record fast races on Saturday, and record slow ones on Tuesday, record numbers at Flemington, and a record number of visitors, one might think enough had been achieved. Far from it. It is women who have broken the biggest record of all. They have taken the bit in their teeth, abstained from the usual marvellous millinery which seems part of the Cup season, and worn such clothing as adjectives refuse to describe. It seems unbelievable that only three short, years ago the powers that be at Flemington made it their business to arrange that a warning should ' he given to a lady who, it was reported, intended going to the races in a gown that revealed a jewelled garter. This year hundreds of women would certainly have displayed jewelled garters had they numbered them among their possessions—and no one would have turned a hair. Both at the Derby and Steeplechase there were gowns decollette enough to bring the blush to the seasoned .cheek, but all these extravagancies paled before the wearing of pink tights under materials of a diaphanous nature. The effect was frequently calculated to leave one positively gasping. Phenomenal Progress. Never has Fashion on more legitimate grounds displayed such phenomenal progress as it has done since last season. Then the draped skirt was in its infancy; now the average smart woman is presumably fashioned rather on the line of a kite'. The spiral drapery widens her about the hips—the very part she has recently been endeavouring so hard to keep slender —and narrows her down toward the feet In a great many instances the outline is precisely that of the swagger English rider, “’im with the baggyfied breeches,” and when some of this special variety of gown was seen, as it frequently was, in checked and plain clothes, it was not so easy to declare whether your sister or your brother was approaching you. At one of the functions a girl, whose gown combined champagne-colored chiffon satin with white crepe, had this spiral drapery so exactly like a cornucopia that her feet and ankles seemed in some extraordinary way to he pouring out of her clothes. Another ultra smart woman had a black spiral drapery so adjusted over a very narrow green skirt that at a very little distance she resembled nothing so much as a new variety of tree. Never in the memory of women lias Fashion played such tricks as she is doing now, and it is only the women whom the goddess has not been able to fool who have looked their very best this season.