ladies' Column. Vanity Fair.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1917, 18 October 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

ladies' Column. Vanity Fair.

" All the royal ladies of Europe," says a Paris correspondent of the Boston Courier, " are patrons of worth, excepting one—Queen Victoria. Besides furnishiug these with many, not all, of their dresses, he sends also many an hermetically sealed case of dresses to faraway places like Peru, Archangel, and the Cape of Good Hope. Parisian society, therer fore, gets but a share of his work. During the twenty-five years of his establishment in Paris, he has seen very many competitors "rise and fall, and, while he is yet in no wise in his decadence, there are other houses as much sought as* his own, each great dressmaker having a distinctive style. Some produoe models even more elegant than those of Worth, but none are so fertile in new idtas. The essayeuae, or trier-on, in Worth's establishment, is an accomplished fitter, who puts the garment upon the client, and makes, under Worth's directions, any changes in the fit or the position of the trimming of the dress."

One of Worth's favorite ideas for this season is a very simple use of the fashionable tulle for young girls' ball dresses. The model consists of half a dozen straight, full skirts of white tulle, the upper one being embroidered with little flowers. The corsage is of the simple shirred " madonna " pattern, and the accessories are all to be light and girlish. This dresß, having such high sanction, ought to be fashionable for two or three seasons. Unhappily it will not be adopted by our distant population until after its favor is fallen in Paris. The shades of lilac seem to be as much chosen for evening dress by mature beauties as copper color is for visiting toilet. The Grand Duohess Vladimir has just received from Worth a dress in velvet of Persian lilac shade, of which the skirt is draped and fringed with silver. The demi-train is embroidered on the edge with silver, from under which falls a rich trimming of malines lace. The corsage has a Marie Antoinette fichu of malines lace. This model could be copied easily for a dinner dress in America.

The personal life of these great dressmakers, like that of all leaders in any art or profession, is such a matter of common curiosity, that we are sure of interesting our readers in a description of the house and manner of life of tbe latest risen among the great establishments, the Maison Morin. There is little generally known about this firm, excepting that they came from Vienna at the instance of Sarah Bernhardt, and made the wonderful dresses for " Fidora," of which all the world has read. In fact, the Morin ladies are Parisians, who went to Vienna, as New York dressmakers go to Chicago, because the field was crowded at home, and they saw fortune beckoning afar. The two sisters were forewomen in Parn. They set up for themselves in Vienna, with Monsieur Blossier, who married one of the sisters, as their man of business. The work is well divided among them, and the profits are all kept in the family. One sister has a talent for fitting corsages, probably unequalled at present in all Paris. The other stays in the reception rooms and talks to dozens of clients and employees at a time, directing, deciding, distributing, advising, setting, in short, all the wheels a-going, and always serene and sympathetic.

The Morins remained ten years in Vienna, gathering in money, receiving orders even from Paris, and competing with Parisian rivals for the custom of the most finished court ladies in the world, the Austrians. At length, after much vague invitation and discussion, they decided suddenly to move to Paris, only last April. They took a hotel—that is, of course, a complete houseon tb.6 corner of the Rue de la Paix and Eve Daunon, and Jfurnished it charmingly in Genoese velvet, with old hangings and great mirrors in carved wood frames. There are between two hundred and three hundred workmen and work-women employed in the house. Some of these employees take their meals in the basement, where are kitohens and dining-rooms for the common folk. On the ground floor are the rooms for packing and sending off the dresses, living rooms for the men employed in this service, and the gas apparatus from which the house is lighted. Next above is the low story called the entresol. Here are the private apartments of Madame Blossier, where live her children and their nurses and governurses, as one little girl called that genteel functionary who has so much less comfort and independence than the menials. Mademoiselle Morin has her private rooms on this floor, where are assembled the Morin family portraits, and certain souvenirs of their friend, Mademoisefie Bernhardt — portraits of her and sketches made by her, having her signature.

We now come to the " first floor," in Parisian language, the large high floor, where customers are received and the trying on rooms are. This is Mademoiselle Morin's domain, Bhe having that difficult part o! the business, the personal interviews, to attend to. There are half a dozen trying-on rooms, so that no lady is obliged to wait, p.nd each, when fairly in her new gown, can be visited for a little five minutes by the chief, while being for the rest of the time attended by an inferior official. The second floor holds stores of dress-gooods, brocades, velvets, silks, embroideries, furs, gauzes, flowers, and lace, metal ornaments and bead garnitures of all sorts. Here also is the corsage department, under Madame Blossier's charge. The reader is doubtless sufficiently well informed to know that at a good dressmaker's the humblest work-women have their talent studied, and that the plainest dress has its portions made separately. The corsage-maker never sees the skirt, the sleeve sewer never sews a dart, the draper never cuts the gores, and the designer never has shears in her hand. If you want a striking illustration of the history and process of that evolution which takes place in every growing organisation, be it material or immaterial, study the dress-making art. The clever young woman at home who can do almost any sewing moderately well may be compared to the shapeless jelly-like animal with no segregated parts, any portion of its substance being able to do all that any other portion can. The whole Morin establishment, with it 3 hundreds of people, each doing his own work and no others, becomes the parallel to the highly-organised animal, with all its parts complete and each part unfitted for other function than its own. The corsage-rooms, then, make a separate department on the second floor. On the third, outting-rooms, rooms where trimmings are made, rooms for sewing-maohine work, and another kitchen and dining-room for. girls who are employed in these departments. The fourth floor has the rooms for skirts and for skirt trimmings, finishing-rooms, &c. The fifth has bed-rooms for servants and resident employees. In the corsage department is to be noted a vast wardrobe with pigeon-holes, where every client has a fitted lining kept in a numbered and tioketed case. Among the ladies, who, having ordered dresses from the Morin house, possess their " number," are the Queens of Greece and Denmark, Queens Christine and Isabella of Spain, the Empress of Austria, and half-a-dozen imperial archduchesses, and 'Mrs. Mackay. The same Grand DucheßS Vladimir, who ordered the j Persian lilac dresß of Worth, ordered, from Morin lately, a dinner toilet of Parma-violet color. The skirt was all draped in tulle, caught with pearls upon lilac satin ground. Demi-train in violet lampas, lined with ivory epingle velvet, attaohed at one side by a panel of shells made of the lilac, lined with the ivory materials. On the other, lace of E/jglish point carried down in zigzag. Heartshaped corsage with fichu of English point. Mrs. Mackay wears from this house a tea gown which has a round skirt of hortensia satin veiled with cream tulle, all caught with pampiles of steel, suspended by a gold thread. Overdress in Toledo gray epingle lined witii hortensia satin. Over the bouffant tulle chemisette, which forms part of all these tea

gowns, i8 the famous Morin vest, which is a long, coat-shaped garment of gray epingle, lined with rose satin.