PARIS CRAZE FOR SNAKE-SKIN

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 116, 6 August 1927, Page 20

PARIS CRAZE FOR SNAKE-SKIN

PREFERRED TO FUR ON NEWEST COATS LIVE PYTHON LURE Paris is full of well-dressed women, but it is not easy to distinguish their nationality. The dresses are worn by women who are accustomed to wear clothes designed by the master-mak-ers; yet there is a difference. The Parisienne is more subtle than : the Anglo-Saxon. The Italian hints at her nationality in her choice of colours. The Russian manages to look exotic. To follow on the heels of fashion and to go to the Bois de Boulogne for a cocktail before luncheon or dinner is interesting, not only for the fashion writer, but for the student of human nature. As magnificent car after car drives up to the favourite restaurant and unloads its occupants, much may be learned by the way in which the ladies step out from their carriages. Miss Pinkerton used to teach her young ladies how to do this sort of thing. T»o the Miss Pinkertons of to-day teach their girls the same graces? Elastic, well-proportioned, rounded French figures with neat feet and ankles, beautifully clothed in fine silk stockings and perfect shoes, descend lightly from their cars. Anglo-Saxon girls do the same thing in quite a dii- j ferent way. Their legs are longer and their movements more boyish. Skirts Gracefully Full Graceful as nymphs many of them, they have not the same feminine lure as the Latins. Has it not always been so? Once it was Puritanism which caused the difference. To-day it is sport. Bright colours, light colours, flowered silks, muslins, woollens, light as silk are used to make the dresses which are worn, and all the skirts are gracefully full, reasonably short, sometimes they are divided in that new way which completely hides the division. Slim bodices, curving very gently to the figure, floating scarves to match the dresses or the hats. A new idea is to have a scarf and a bag made of the same material. It is practical and pretty when the scarf is of some light woollen or heavy silk material. Two scarves have to be used when the scarf is plain except for its figured ends, since the bag is made of the ends only. Fur is much used to trim dainty clothes of the ‘ dressy” order. A georgette frock has a coat of the same material trimmed with very light fur round the hem. or round the neck, not round both. A black silk coat has a fur collar; a coat of crepe satin also has fur on It. The fur has to be chosen among the. light-weight kinds, which are lynx, wolf, fox, or their Imitations. A substitute for fur trimmings on many coats is snake skin. So popular is this skin that in a shop in the

centre of the city, a python lives in the window with its jaws safely bound. Anything more likely to set the human heart against the use of snakeskin may not be easily imagined. Three colours, apart from black and white, may be said to reign supreme this season in Paris: beige, grey and navy blue. Green is worn, too, t nc in flower dresses many colours are mingled, but when all is said and done the plain colours hold their own.