WOMEN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 292, 2 May 1913, Page 6

WOMEN'S WORLD

HOBBLE SKIRT TO RETURN TIGHTER Til AX EVER. According to a London fashion expert who has just returned from Paris, the dressmakers of that city are proposing, not merely to revive the hobble skirt, but to make it tighter than ever, so that women will be almost unable to walk in it. This London expert says:— "The skirts I saw in Paris were so tight around the legs that the wearers could scarcely walk. The dresses are frightfully ugly. In some cases they are draped up some inches in front" or on the side to allow the feet some little movement, and are arranged with folds of the material in drapings around the thigh and tapering to the ankles. The draped hobble is more insidious than the plain hobble skirt. It has deceived everybody, because the fashion prophesied led women to believe that the hobble skirt was dead, that folds and drapery were coming in, and, therefore, that the skirts were bound to be fuller and that more material would be used. The extra material, however, is used in draping the bodice and around the hips, and allows but a wispiness of skirt around the ankles. In very many cases skirts are so narrow, even in tailor-made costumes, that they must be split in directoire fashion up to the knee or even above, either at, the side or in front. In many cases buttons and buttonholes allow thewearer to determine how long the slit shall be."

"Almost all the New Parisian skirts are slit—they must be," said another Londoner back from the French capital.

WHERE WIVES MUST NOT CON TRADICT

Miss Edith Sellars, writing in the Cornhill Magazine, has many curious things to tell, of the Balkans, which she knows well, but nothing morec urious than this of women in Montenegro:— A Montenegrin woman is at a great disadvantage to her husband, for no matter what wild statements he may make she is bound by law not to contradict him. Her solemn renunciation, so far as he is concerned, of her innate right to contradict is an integral part of the Montenegrin marriage ceremony. Every bride, before she can become a-, wife, must, standing before the altar, swear that, let her bridegroom say what he will, she will never, when he is hor husband, gainsay him. This is, perhaps, why a Montenegrin marriage is such a very doleful ceremony. I was once at 'Oettinje, at which the bride sobbed aloud the whole time, as if every friend she had ever had was just dead and her heart was broken.

' ARE-MEN VAIN? Sime time ago.l was walking along Piccadilly, and noticed several men staring hard into a shop window. Thinking that whatever was interesting them might also prove interesting to me, I looked in, too, when I got up to it. Well, I found that a number of hand glasses were so hung behind the panes as to be very convenient for looking at oneself, and seeing that one's collar was immaculate and tie neat. I arranged my own by the aid of one of them, and nodded a little confidential nod to myself in the glass at the delicious ingenuousness of men who can do these things in Piccadilly.—"Madge," in the Gentlewoman.

- HIGH HEEL DANGERS That apparently harmless piece of wood, the high heel, the worker of many beauty miracles, produces first fatigue, then irritability, and even neurasthenia. The balance of the body is destroyed, the upper part tilted forward ;the chest contracts, and consumption threatens. Little by little other organs are affected also, 1 notably the head, and your pinkcheeked damsel'of to-day bevomes the chronic invalid of to-morrow. It is a frightful picture, perhaps a trifle overdrawn for the morals' sake, but still in essentials only too grucsomely true. GENERAL General Sir Robert Baden-Powell's bride, who was Miss Olive St. Clair Soames, has proved herself worthy of being the wife of the founder and chief of the Boy Scouts of the world. She has been roughing it in Algeria with her

husband, who is inured to hardships. "We were living the simple life in the deßert. We had only one pan, and that had to do for both frving fish and boiling coffe," said Lady Baden-Powell. Dazzling with a brilliancy more radiant than a full-flashed searchlight, California's diamond queen, Mrs. Clara Bald-

"•in Stoeker, £2,400,000 heiress of the late "Lucky" Baldwin, was the sensation among the beautifully-gowned women who attended the grand opera at Los Angeles. Gowned in a gorgeous decollete dress, decorated with gems valued aot £72,660, and made of flashing goldfish net over golden satin, slit up one side to reveal diamond-studden stockings and diamond-buckled pumps, together with her sparkling diamond crown, Mrs. Stoeker appears a queen who has stepped from a fairy book, waving a magic wand which turns everything to diamonds. A story is being told (says the flentlewomai}) to the effect that in returning from his visit to Dr. Moore, the Bordeaux throat specialist, last month, King Alfonso broke his motor journey for the night at Pau on his way to San Sebastion, and in the evening had a box with two friends at the opera to hear the "Kreutzer Sonata." Having been feted by the management and enthusiastically received by the audience, his Majesty (as is his custom) sent his aide-de-camp with a bouquet to the leading lady. .Much to his surprise it was at once returned, without explanation. After scanning his programme, the King exclaimed: "Of course, she's singing under an assumed name. Go and find out her real one." The aide-de-camp hesitated. ''Tell me the lady's name at once." demanded the King. "Senor Ferrer," was the reply. It will be remembered that Sen or Ferrer was shot as a revolutionary four years ago. His daughter, who made every effort to save him, afterwards took to the stage. The Melbourne correspondent of the Sydney Telegraph writes:—"The tragic happening at the home of Bear-Admiral and Lady Crcsswell gave society here one of the biggest pauses it has had for many u day. Miss Cress well adds another name to the long list of victims to gas poisoning. She was a charming girl, pretty, popular, and full of life, and at the time of her death was in the midst of a whirl of gaiety incidental to the arrival of the Melbourne and the New Zealand. She was, in fact, resting befored ressing to go to a dinner at Mrs. Fred. Payne's when she was suffocated by gas. Lady Cresswell, who is probably one of the most deservedly popular women in Melbourne, was at a society function, and she came home to he met with the news of the death of the girl who had just grown up to being her almost constant companion. It is not generally known that the most poisonous gas lias no betraying smell. Some little time ago three very well-known young men were poisoned here. One ilieil, and the other two are still suffering acutely from the effects of their mis-: adventure. In their case .the smell of escaping gas could hardly be detected."