DRESS:  IN SEASON AND IN REASON.

By A lady dressmaker.

The extreme warmth of September has naturally postponed ideas of winter, and our preparations are generally very backward.  In fact, at the end of September many people would have said that they knew nothing whatever about new things, and that they did not want them either, and the secret of this indifference would have been attributable to the weather.  It is to be hoped that we shall have a seasonable winter, less cold and disagreeable than the last.

During my visit to Paris I found but little to chronicle in the way of winter novelties.  The chief changes seemed to be in materials and their designs.  Checks are in high favour, and it is said they will supersede stripes; and last year, when I was there at this season, they said much the same thing, but this year they seemed more determined to vote stripes old-fashioned.  To tell the truth, I think the Parisians, and the women in France generally, are great admirers of plaids, and do not find stripes becoming, simply because they are usually very short and stout.  Englishwomen, who are tall and stout, like them because they decrease their apparent size, and give an effect of length while decreasing breadth.  On tall people plaids have a bad effect.

[Illustration:  Autumn cloaks, ulsters, and gowns.]

Rough-faced materials constitute the majority of those prepared, and plain stuffs are still united with plaided and striped ones in the same dress; but this is not an absolute rule this year, for some dresses are entirely of either plaids or stripes, or else are of plain material only.  Many of the materials are plain, with a bordering at one edge of plaid.  For instance, a grey of rough-faced stuff had a bordering of a large check in lines of a paler grey, a little relief being given by pale lines of a clear Naples-yellow.  The effect was quiet and subdued by the roughness of the surface of the cloth.  With this gown the underskirt was made of the plaid material, quite plain, and the overskirt of the bordered part was draped above it in simple straight long folds, the plaid part being at the lower edge of the overskirt.  The bodice was of the plain, and it had a plastron, or waistcoat front, of the plaid.  The buttons (as are many in use this year) are of smoked pearl, and are very small for the fronts of gowns and larger for the jacket-bodices.  Bretelles of velvet are used as trimmings to the bodices of these rough woollens, and the collars and cuffs are almost invariably of the same material, which seems likely to retain its popularity through the winter.  The velvet collars are both useful and becoming, and, in addition, they save white trimmings at the neck.  We rather rejoice in our emancipation from that bondage, and I hear many people say they will never resume it again, now they have once found that they can look well without the once inevitable white collar or frill.  The tendency in every woman’s mind who is possessed of ordinary good sense is to simplify everything connected with clothes, and I feel sure we shall all be healthier and happier when we have banished many things from our wardrobes which we now think absolutely needful.