WOMAN’S WORLD.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 June 1922, Page 10

WOMAN’S WORLD.

WHAT THEY ARE WEARING LONDON FASHIONS. Covert coating, in the familiar shade between fawn and sand color, has come back, states a fashion correspondent of the Times. For durability it has no rival and it usually becomes popular about every three or five years, though it never quite goes out of fashion. It i never looks dusty or soiled and is pracI tically weather-proof. | A suit of covert coating can, however, only be made in the simplest I manner, and this year it is almost in l 1 variably belted and often stitched, the coat reaching to a little below the hips, while the belt, which is of the same material, has a little horn buckle in a color to match. Strap® and buckles define the patch pockets and are repeated on the sleeves, where they ' draw in the cuff three or four inches ‘above the edge. The lining should be plain, and the skirt should have one patch pocket on the left side. Stockinette is another acceptable material; in indefinite heather mixtures it re.sembles Scotch tweed. The stockinette suit is made exactly like any other tailor- • made coat and skirt. Some of the coats of the softer falling woollen materials, or of black bengaline or crepe-de-chine, have long basques reaching to the knees. They are box-pleated below the belt, which usually consists of carved or pierced inetal plaques, the box-pleats being carefully pressed to lie flat. The upper part is plain, with long lapels, forming a garment which well becomes a fairly full figure. These coats accompany the three-piece suits and are useful for chilly spring days. In contrast is the suit with a tiny sac coat with upstanding collar, which is made something like a jacket and is.

usually in -navy serge with the collar, cuffs, and a narrow band, running down the front, of lacquer red-faced cloth bound with gold or silver braid, and often trimmed -as well with rows of black soutache. Quite a third of the new spring suits are made with a coat which contrasts cither in color or material with the skirt. ?onie of these contrasts are too bright except for the country for instance, a loose belted coat of flageolet green ratine or duvetyn goes with a beige skirt. On the links the blazer coats of duvetyn, which are worn with skirts of rough woollen material, are of the brightest colors, while for town wear a similar but more subdued scheme consists of striped skirts, sometimes box-pleated, and accompanying plain coats with high collars. Plain coats are still bound with varnished braid, and all the new tailor shirts are-widp enough for comfort and ease. ! For hats and toques, black moire is much used, but the watered design is smaller and not so bright as formerly. Lace draperies, especially the Spanish i type of lace, are frequent, but as the summer advances more face veils will .be worn. Already there is the clear, I light-meshed veil, which can be put on ; over the. face and under the hat if the ; trimming is complicated. A pretty ' trimming for a moire toque is a rosette j or circular mo’tif of closely packed red rowan berries set in a bed of glossy ivy leaves. Crystal beads trim the evening gowns of old and young. A "'ale apricot crepe Romain gown has been showered thickly with tiny square crystal beads on the corsage and the floating panels, while between each panel a long crystal fringe falls from the waist to the hem. The apricot tulle sash is caught low down on the left side with a few glittering ears of crystal wheat.

I THE BATTLE OF SKIRTS. ! CONTROVERSY OVER LENGTH. • A controversy is At present agitating ' the women of the civilised world as to the ideal length for skirts, and as to , whether there be an ideal length or ! not. London papers have taken up the matter with avidity, and many and various are the opinions brought forth. A veritable battle has ensued. Fuel is added to the strife by the news that American women are now succumbing to the longer skirt, and that five inches is considered the highest permissible height from the ground for an afternoon or dance frock. Sir William Or pen threw new light on the Battle of the Skirts in a recent talk, with a Daily Mail representative. The witty Irish R.A. is a painter of modern women, a war artist, and a writer of vivid prose and verse. He now appears as a dress reformer. “I saw the long dress, with its panel touching the ground, in Paris,” he said. “Don't ask me what I think about it. Dress is not a question of inches off the ground or from the knees. There is not and never has been a dress designer who could make women dress as they should according to their age, their figure, and their height. They simply will not do it. Fashion! What we want is the fashion of dressing to show the best and not the worst of a woman. If a woman has a scraggy neck by all means let her cover it. If she has a lovely arm why cover it with a glove?” “Was there never a period when women dressed to suit her age?” ,£ Not in the Victorian days. Before that the older woman never appeared. After 28 she stopped at home. And now the grandmother parades her figure in the skirt of a girl of 20. You cannoit tell who or what she is until you see her face. ft “From what I have seen in Paris I am sure the short skirt is going, killed by the fact that no woman could sit down in it without showing inches above her knee. But that doesn’t help us. The long skirt, is just as bad for, some women as the short. They are long in the back, short in the leg, <and look dumpy and awkward.” Sir William Orpen ended where he began, with a wish that women would dress to suit their figures short skirt, long skirt, high neck, low neck, small waist, loose waist—they are all the same to the painter if they make the woman look her best. Modern conditions, he frankly confessed, make his sixteenth-century ideal unattainable. MODERN HOUSE DESIGNING. INTEREST OF WOMEN. There is scarcely a woman houseworker in the world who, if asked, would not be able to give a concise description of her conception of the ideal house from the housekeeper’s pOTitt of view. After all it is the; housekeeper whose work is centred ini the home, and she ought, above all, people, to be consulted in the drawing [up of architectural plans, says an cxi change. I Women are becoming more and more, in. fwshitecture. Jaoth fr«a‘

the artistic and the utility point of view. Among the number of women who have taken up house designing as a profession, two notable names are those of Miss Chapman who began her work some twenty-five years ago over a draughting board in an architect’s office in Boston, and Mrs. May Cane, one of our most distinguished British women architects. Mrs. Cane, who has been elected the first woman member of the Concrete Institute for Architects and Engineers, had no special training for the profession of which she is a distinguished member. She has always taken an interest in architecture, especially from the point of view of adapting the construction of the house to labor-saving devices. Mrs. Cane is the designer of a new type of bungalow with ‘'fitted furniture,” adapted to save domestic labor. The idea is to build the furniture into the dwelling, so that there is nothing to move, no space for the accumulation of dust, cupboards are under the fixed bed, chests of drawers form part of the dressng table. The kitehen is a model of labor-saving appurtenances built into the room. Bookcases ,and ■even settees, are part of the structure, and not of its movable appointments. OYSTERS IN SEASON. Most people who care for oysters like them best raw, in which state they are most digestible. They are usually served in the shell with lemon juice or vinegar and white or cayenne pepper. There is always a variety of ways of cooking them, the following being perhaps the most popular: Fried Oysters.—Drain and dry the oysters well and then dip each one in beaten egg and breadcrumbs with a little finely-chopped parsley, or. in a light batter if preferred. Fry crisply in boiling fat, draining afterwards on a hot cloth. Scalloped Oysters.—2£doz. oysters, J pint milk, loz. butter, loz. flour, breadcrumbs, and salt and pepper to taste. Scald the oysters in their own liquor. Make a sauce by melting the butter, adding the flour and milk gradually, stirring over the fire till it thickens, and boiling for a few minutes. Remove from the fire and add the oysters ; and the seasoning. Put the mixture in i a buttered piedish, or scalloped shells, : cover with the breadcrumbs rolled in a I little melted butter, and Brown in Ithe I oven, I Curried Oysters.—2doz. oysters, | pint i milk, juice of half a lemon, 1 teaspoon- | ful chutney 4 i tablespoonful of curry, 1 I tablespoonful ground rice, loz. butter, ; 1 tomato and 1 large mushroom (if in | season), 1 apple, and 1 onion. Mince i the onion, apple, tomato, and mush- • room. Fry them in the butter, then ■ add the ground rice and curry powder, chutney, and a little salt. Finally add 'he milk gradually and simmerl 20 minutes. Lastly add the oysters and lemon juice and serve with rice. Oyster Pie.—%lb of flour, | teaspoon- , ful of salt, 1 teaspoonful of baking ' powder, 4oz. of dripping or lard (or both mixed together), about 1 gill of water, 2doz. oysters, salt and pepper, ' i teaspoonful of grated onion, 1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and about 1 gill of a good white sauce. Sieve the flour, salt and baking powder. Rub in 'the fat and mix* to a paste with the water. Roll out on a floured board about \ -inch thick. Line an open tart : tin with this. Beard the oysters and place them on the pastry; sprinkle I with the salt, pepper, onion and parsley 1 and cover with the sauce. Make a lattice work of pastry strips over the top and bake in a fairly hot oven until the pastry is cooked—2o to 30 minutes. Oyster Patties.—Scald 2doz. oysters, beard and, halve them. Melt loz. butter l in a saucepan, mix in loz. of flour, add the strained oyster liquid, a small %- i pint of milk, or less milk and a little ■ cream, season to taste and bring to the boil, stirring well. Boil 4 minutes to i cook the flour, then add the oysters ■ and a few drops of lemon juice. The i mixture must not boil after the oysters ■ are put in. For the cases Tine some I patty tins/ with a light puff pastry ■ rolled thinly. Put a piece of bread in each to keep the bottom of the patty from rising. Cover with a lid of pas- ! try, cut a hole in it the size of a florin, glaze with beaten egg and bake. Take out of the tins, remove the top and take out the bread. Fill with the oyster mixture, put on the lid again and serve. WOMEN IN LOVE. ‘ Women even when they are in love don’t wear their winter tweeds in the middle of the season.” “There are half a million women in : Great Britain whose only crime is that, craving happiness, they have taken their happiness in defiance of some male. These women—who crave neither ‘free love’ nbr the ‘right to motherhood,’ but only the right to married happiness—are the bond slaves of our national hyprocrisy. Sometimes their own strength, sometimes death, sometimes money, sometimes the clemency of their legal owners sets them free, but for the most part they live in outlawry—neither man nor woman in England may claim release from a drunkard, from a lunatic, from a criminal or from any of the thousand and one miseries which wreck the human soul.” —Gilbert Frankar. “I don’t hold with milk and water love affairs. If a chap isn’t - inflammable when he’s engaged, he will be precious hard to kindle later on.”—Eric Leadbitter. , “I hide my thoughts in speech. It is only in silence that we really are communicative, one with another. Speech merely dispels the fleeting vision, and so we talk, usually of inane things, to hide the real desires and purposes of our soul. The silence of lovers means the perfect understanding of souls.” “I love women too much to spoil the romance by marrying them.”—W. J. Makin. . THAT SMELL OF PAINT. The odour of new paint is extremely unpleasant, and to some persons harmful. The smell may be almost entirely removed if a few pails of water are placed about the room where painting has been in progress. Hay is even better for the purpose. This should be packed rather loosely into large pans or buckets and placed about the rooms and passage. In a very short while the odour of the paint is removed and the air is wholesome onee again. Naturally in all eases where paint has been carried out a free ventilation is desirable. Slices of onion, floating on water, will also absorb the smell of paint.

?: TO OLEAN JET. i Jet chains and broodhes can be clean* W immersed in a cup contain'ing parts of vinegar and water. The ornaments should be steeped for a quarter of an hour, then removed and placed on a clean sheet of paper. It will be found that they have regained ihehL jMaahuU lustra.

CREME OF CAULIFLOWER. Creme of cauliflower is a glorified and delicious way of serving the vegetable. Break the flowers off a fine cauliflower, remove the stalks, and wash in cold water; then boil in salted water for about quarter of an. hour, or until they are quite done. Pour into a colander, and thence into a basin, and reduce the flower to a soft mash or puree. Then add two large tablespoonsful of white sauce made with butter, flour, and milk, and two well-beaten eggs, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Mix in the mashed cauliflower, and pour into a buttered motdd, -Oiid steam foi* half an hour. Take the mould out of the water 10 .minutes before serving, and alleiw the cream to settle. Finally, turn oil, to a hot dish and cover with a good sauce slightly flavored with anchovy. • 1,1 THE HOME COOK’ .: ', :• vo Take one ox-tail, a turnip, an cnioji, stuck with cloves, a couple of carrots, a few peppercorns, salt and pepper to taste. Divide the. small joints of the tail, and chop up larger . ones.. Put into a saucepan with about two..quarts o-f water and stew . two hours. Det it stand away from the fire for a while, then skim as much fat off top. aS possible. Add vegetables (whole), and boil two hours longer. Take out the vegetables. ‘Thicken with a little browned flour. COCONUT BISOQITS. - Ingredients: Two ounces of dessicated coconut, two ounces of castor sugar, one teaspoon of flour, one white of egg, wafer paper. Method: Chop the coconut a little more finely if necessary, and mix it in a basin with the other dry ingredients. Whip the ■White of an* egg to a stiff froth, and bind all together with this. Put small squares of wafer paper on a dry baking tin, arrange a teaspoonful of the mixture on each, and bake in a slow oven for half an hour, or until the biscuits are firm' and of a pale brown color. Cool them on a sieve, breaking off the wafer paper which projects beyond the edges. Keep them in an air-tight tin. APPLE, DATE, AND NUT SALAD. 2 cupfuls of sour apples, 1 cupful of stoned dates, A cupful of English walnuts, i cupful of French dressing, 2 • cupfuls of shredded lettuce, 1 large red sour apple. Wash, pare and cut the apples into fine slices; remove the stones from the dates, cut each date into two slices (lengthwise), and add to the apples. The nuts are broken (not chopped) and added to the apples and dates. Mix all well together; line a salad bowl with shredded lettuce; put the salad in the centre, and cover it with French dressing; wash, and polish the red apple; cut it into eighths, and garnish the salad around the edge with the red side out. DOMESTIC JOTTINGS. There are few better knife polishes than coffee grounds, but they must be very dry before being placed in a tin. They can be easily dried by being spread out on a tin and leaving them in the oven when it is cooling off after being used for cooking. A pinch of bicarbonate o-f soda can be added to the grounds, and will make an effective polish which saves labor. GREASE ON WOOD. When hot fat has been dropped, on .the kitchen table or floor, much labor will be saved if cold water be thrown over it at once. This makes the wax set and prevents it from sinking into the wood. When cold the .wax may be scraped awav and the slight trace of grease can be removed with very hot watqr. Where the grease has sunk deeply into the wood the surface should be repeatedly pressed with a hot iron over blotting paper. Fuller’s earth or French chalk piled on the mark will often absorb the grease, although the process may take some hours. TO REMOVE RUST SPOTS FROM LINEN. An old-fashioned way—but neverthe* less one of the most efficacious and safe methods—of removing rust spots from linen -and other material is still used. The spots should be thoroughly moistened with juice squeezed directly •from a freshly-cut lemon. Then the material should be exposed to bright sunshine. Leave it for an hour or longer and then rinse out the lemon juice. In bad cases, one application of the lemon juice may not remove the marks, and a second or even a third will then be advisable. Hardly ever does this plan fail, if it is persisted in, to take out the rust spots. Finally it is important ta remove all traces of the lemon juice, which in course of time might act upon the fabric.