WHAT WE WOMEN THINK

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 17, 6 November 1931, Page 32

WHAT WE WOMEN THINK

For the Christmastide. A VERY simple Pot Pourri is made by merely collecting. and drying rese petals, lavender, and verbena leaves. Get sufficient for. a bowl for your room, and plenty. more for little Christmas gifts in the form of small sachets and bags, filled with this delicious reminder of summer days. Few gifts of a slight kind are more welcome at Christmas than are these when daintily put up in pretty muslins, tied with gay ribbon, or in flat pillow sachets, made of wide silk ribbon in vivid shades. When resting in the garden on hot afternoons, it is a pleasant pastime to embroider appropriate quotations on this muslin’and ribbon, to be used later for gifts. "Fragrant memories." "Here’s. Rosemary, that’s for Remembrance,"’ and countless others of that kind, give an original touch to your small offering. : Gold thread or coloured silks are best suited to this purpose. Petals must always be gathered on dry days, in the morning, and put out daily in the sun and brought-in at night till brown and erisp, > One: foreign. recipe advises the use of carnations, stocks, heliotrope, and rose leaves; this mixture gives very sweet and satisfactory results. Another simple yet charming blend, quite within the reach of many an owner of a modest garden, is just Rosemary leaves, a little lemon thyme and a good deal of lavender. Still another very effective yet easy combination is leaves of scented geranium, balm, and verbena, rose petals and carnation petals. A sprinkle of bay salt may be added to this. , You. will find these simpler recipes are not only easier, but much more beautiful, and more reminiscent of garden days and happy summer hours than some of the more complicated ones, which direct the addition of various essences and flavours; in these you often lose the real, flower odour, and get just a kind of aromatic scent, very nice in its way, but not suggestive of the real flowers with their incomparable lure, Apropos Blouses. WHEN you are attracted to the remnant counter, remember that twv. and a quarter to two and a half yard remnants of 36-inch material are ideat for those popular blouses of the moment. Satin, spotted and © patterned Silks, and crepes are modish fabrics. A variety of blouses will help to make one tailor-made suit do duty for uny occasion, Bossy! THE American middle-aged woman in England or on the Continent is rather overwhelming, with her desire to see everything, know everything, discuss everything, dominate everything, and one wishes she would give her husband a chance to explain his views occasionally. But when one is in the U.S.A., able to see her in her own home or her club, one has to admit that she has remarkable qualities, even if one still wishes thet "Priend Husband" might have more of a chance to express his personality Anyway, she has proved that a woman can grow old and yet stay young, .aud. what is more important, make other people feel that she is efficient, vital and exceedingly necessary in civic

Be Wary. HEN the smart woman of the moment who likes to keep pace with the revolutions of fashion’s wheel arrives at her favourite hat salon she will find herself called to make a choice involving more than the mere selection of a hat that pleases her taste. The. berets, skull caps, and big brims that were everyone’s are being relegated to the scrap-heap of modes that .

have been. ‘The woman in ques‘ of a hat must decide whether she can cultivate the languid graceful air that takes a drooping feather, acquire the dashing Robin Hood pose or master the art of that extreme smartness that makes the balancing of one of the new elongated shapes that may be likened to boats with keel uppermost possible. There is also the aiternative of one of the veritable pork-pie styles exhumed from nineteenth cen tury eccentric fashions, It is a question of personality-and one and all of the new styles are difficult to wear except by the appropriate type of woman, Airy, Fairy! THIS year New York had-a veraze for mesh-mesh frocks, mesh lingerie, mesh hats, mesh stockings and gloves. Men did not get in quite so much of a mesh, keeping conservatively to thin cotton suits, looking like cloth, shirt sleeves (indoors), and light panama hats. For manual labour men wear singlets of vivid hues--nd the road-workers, truck-drivers, and negro labourerg add picturesque and exotic

notes to the prevailing monotones of modern streets. Men, women and children made every possible concession to the heat in one direction at leastthat of clothes. Everybody wore the minimum-sleeveless frocks, with jackets to slip on for the street-and underneath, if possible, only one under: garment-and mesh at that. a Incarnate Beauty. — QHE looked like the Delphic Sybil and had to behave as such. She was a Ladye in a Bower, an ensorcelled Princess, a Blessed Damozel, while she would have preferred to be a bright, chatty little woman in request for small theatre parties and afternoons up the river. Brightness might equally have been expected from Deirdre of the Sorrows, chattiness from the Sphinx. She was Venus Astarte, "betwixt the sun and moon a Mystery." And there she had to stay. -Graham Robertson’s description of William Morris’s lovely wife. Fer Glad Girls. Ti erochet hat has undergone a change, but, much to the disgust of milliners, the clever modern girl, not to be done out of her home-made confection, has now evolved a‘ charming little shape on the Robin Hood lines, of chenille. in some dark colour, brown or moss green, with a stiffened edge to the brim so that it can be peaked or downturned in the front and fastened up at the back. Very young girls are keeping to a beret. however, with a double-padded ring edge. Brownhaired girls are choosing stockinette to tone exactly with their colouring, and, of course, for the trimming of these brown, green or black caps, the doubleheaded pin in white, yellow or pink is still as popular as ever. Decorative Indeed. ORD D’ABERNON pleaded recently for more modern frescoes and wall paintings by young artists of the day as a decoration for modern houses, and suggested that many of them are quite willing to be employed by the day or hour and paid by the foot, in order to get regular decorative work. Such decorations are individual, and in future years will be interesting to the historian. Mrs. Naomi Mitchison, the writer of books on ancient Greece and Rome, is one of the people who have followed Lord D’Abernon’s advice ,and employed young artists to paint the walls of the dining-room and her bedroom at River Court, Chiswick. A decoration of nude figures on a buff ground has been painted by Blair Stanton on what was formerly the pantry wall, now part of the dining-room, above the old pantry washing and draining shelf, now promoted to be a side-table. Instead of glass on this side-table, which Mrs. Mitchison found was liable constantly to breakage, she has placed a strip of new rubber flooring material in a Batik brown and pink design. Grotesque South African children’s toys stand in" proces-

sion at the back. Another painter,..: Agnes Miller Parker, has done a fresco x on the wall of dress cupboards in Mrs. Mitchison’s bedroom, with all the animals and birds that the owner of this room prefers, tortoises, nionkeys, par"ots, guinea-pigs, and cranes, in a ‘antasy that is reproduced on the hintz bedspread. Princess Royal. OMMBPNT has recently been made upon the fact that Princess Mary has not yet been created Princess Royal of Great Britain. It is understood that this title is to come to her in due course. January next will be the first anniversary of the death of the late Princess Royal, eldest sister of the King, and so‘soon:as this time is past it is understood that his Majesty will bestow the title upon his only daughter. It is conferred at the sole discretion of the Sovereign. ,@It may be recalled that there was a jfon- © siderable lapse between the death of the Empress Frederick of Germany, who was also Princess Royal in this country, and the bestowal of the title upon his eldest daughter by King Hdward. Meme The Bathroom Superlative. "THIS bathroom, a feature of the Hapstead residence of an architect, has the walls covered to a height of 3ft. 9in. with polished plate-glass. The glass is painted viridian green on the back, with a narrow border at the top of ultamarine blue, divided from the green and from the upper wall area by half-inch bands of chromium-/ plated brass. The skirting and win-dow-sill are black Belgian marble, and the taps and basin fittings are chrom-jum-plated. The hand-painted decorations on the door, which is flush and unpanelleled, repeat the colours of the wall. The floor is of blue rubber in one piece. The size of this bathroom is 8ft. 9in. by 6ft. 3in. Those Curving Contours. A DOCTOR who ‘finds’ time. to become an expert on'dress and fashions must be a rarity, but Dr. Willett Cunnington, of Dollis Avenue, Finchley, is not only an authority upon women’s dress but has also made one of the finest collections of nineteenth century garments. In a loft at the top of his charming house Dr. Cunnington has gathered a unique collection of crinolines, ball dresses, rid-ing-habits, bustles, bonnets and tippets. "Undoubtedly there is goimgto be a return to femininity-and cu: €s," he declares. "My research into the dress of the nineteenth century has taught me that fashions comé and go in cycles. I hear from Paris: that tight-lacing is definitely returning. There will also be leg-of-mutton sleeves, large feminine hats-and, yes, long hair. The time has come when women are getting tired of the masculine, hiking type of young woman, with her shorts and healthy red face. . The boisterous damsel has once again had her day, and small waists are coming back. I may be ridiculed for my prediction, but. I. foresee a return toy the days when women liked to make out that they were helpless and needed male protection. What is a wasp waist for it if does not at once suggest the need..for a strong right arm to be placed around it? ‘The vertical line is slowly giving way to the

, Nothing In It I rose up in the world, Ooray! Rose very high for me. An earl once asked me down to stay And a duchess came to tea. I. didn’t stay very long with the . earl, And the duchess has done with me. But, still, | rose quite high in the world, Don’t you think?-or don't’ you agree? But now I’m slithering down again, ’ Down the trunk of the slippery tree; I find I'd rather get back to earth, Where I belong, you see. God, let me get down to earth again, Away from the upper ten Millions-for there’s millions of "em Up there-but not any men!

D. H.

Lawrence

in 'Pansies.