ST. CATHERINE’S DAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1939, Page 7

ST. CATHERINE’S DAY

CELEBRATION IN PARIS. The day of the year set aside in honour of St Catherine is the day of the Paris midinettes, as the seamstresses who produce frocks that have made Paris famous are called. If it is a day of rejoicing for them, there is nevertheless for many something of regret mingled with the merriment, for St Catherine’s day is also Old Maids’ day in France. The seamstresses of twenty-five summers who have not yet been found by a husband don lace caps on that day. The caps are elaborate, and in addition to simple and very pretty caps and bonnets, on St Catherine’s day one sees seamstresses wearing gorgeous headdresses inspired by the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, or even the “garden” hats of Marie Antoinette’s time, while others are amusing fancy-dress set pieces representing windmills, the wheel of fortune, even the Eiffel Tower. It is a safe bet that this year will see a number of bonnets supposed to be “Monsieur Chamberlain’s umbrella.”

All work in the dressmaking establishments ceases at midday, and the rest of the afternoon the girls wearing their wonderful headdresses and surrounded by their workroom companions parade the Boulevards and the Champs-Elysees and the main thoroughfares. Many dressmaking houses organise special entertainments for their hands, often hiring an orchestra and turning the workroom into a dance hall. Nearly all the restaurants have a special St Catherine’s day menu and set aside a section for the “Catherinettes,” generally offering them a dainty dessert free. There is a religious service for the midinettes at a church close to the Grands Boulevards, and after the short sermon, at which all the girls wearing St Catherine bonnets sit together, they go in procession to the Rue de Clery where high up on the corner of a house there is a statue of St Catherine, and one of the girls climbs a ladder to place an offering of flowers at the feet of their patron saint.