FEMININE FASHIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 January 1939, Page 8

FEMININE FASHIONS

RUSTLE OF SILK PETTICOATS

The sound of rustling skirts, that soft music which used to accompany every well-dressed woman’s progress, will be heard again this winter. The older generation who remember the charm of hearing silk brush against silk will rejoice at the new fashions which are ready for the festive season. and the young who sneered at voluminous petticoats, which were often dresses in themselves, will soon be forced to admit that the latest styles enhance womanly charm.

Every dressmaker in Paris is showing dresses beneath which the swishswish of taffetas, moire and stiff silk speaks of new emphasis being laid upon petticoats. In some houses short afternoon frocks also boast petticoats of importance. LACE OVER TAFFETAS

A stiff silk petticoat is not just an .die and frivolous thought on the part of a dressmaker; in many cases, it helps to hold out a full skirt made from soft silk, or it serves as an underslip for a lace frock, not to mention its value in preventing any kind of skirt from crushing as easily as it would with no such background. The revival of the petticoat is in reality a mere turn of the wheel of fashion. W'e are wearing evening frocks of well-defined period type which demand them. FINE FLOUNCES.

All these dresses call for petticoats to show them off to best advantage, and some underskirts are made wih. tiers of finely-pleated flounces, while others of moire and similar stiff materials do not require the extra stiffening which flounces provide. Gay colours are the oi’der of the day, particularly for petticoats which are worn with black frocks. There are checked and striped ones, deep violet and rubyred, or vivid green underskirts which are rather more dashing than anything our elders would have thought it quite good taste to indulge in.

Yet for those who fancy them the dressmakers are showing petticoats of crisp white cambric embroidery such as our grandmother chose for those occasions when silk seemed out of place!