Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1913 — Woman Her Home Her Interests [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Woman Her Home Her Interests

SMART LITTLE COATS VELVET ADMIRABLY ADAPTED FOR CHILDREN'S WEAR. Material Gives the Effect of Simple Elegance, 8o Appropriate In the Costume of the Malden Small — Simplicity the Watchword. Children’s coats, as well as coats for grownups, are particularly attractive this t year, and as the season progresses pretty new models appear day after day. The simplicity and childlike quality which are essentials of success in garments for small folk impose limitations, and the eccentric and fantastic are always out of place in children’s clothes. So are the overelaborate and the fussy; but there is such a thing as simple elegance, and this comes within the confines of good taste in children’s dress, though many mothers, even mothers with great fortunes at their disposal, prefer the simplicity without the elegance when it is a matter of planning their children’s outfits. The rich and beautiful velvets of the season offer ample opportunity for that elegant simplicity already mentioned, for velvet simply, and understandlngly handled is, oddly enough, admirably adapted to childish dresses and coats. When one takes even the small amount of costly velvet needed for a child’s coat, lines it with soft satin, trims it lightly with good fur and perhaps adds Just a few touches of hand braiding or hand embroidery one has a little garment whose price is likely to be astonishingly high, but whose beauty is beyond question.

There are many such models in this season’s showing. Velvet in all the dark and medium tones of blue, in black, in browns from seal to sand and beige, in warm dark greens and in many beautiful shades of red is used for smart little coats, almost Invariably fur trimmed, and in some cases velvet is combined with cloth. The last idea has appealed to the designers and occasionally one finds a very successful coat of this type, though in the models for very small girls and boys the one material coat is usually more effective because it is less alible to eccentricity, more sure of striking the simplicity note. One good looking little coat made o>f the two materials looked exceedingly well on the child who wore it The upper part of the coat was of soft, fleecy cloth in diagonal weave and in a warm light brown or leather tone. The bottom of the coat was in black velvet and a band of dark fur separated the two materials and ran up the coat front. The collar and cuffs were of fur.

Less practical but really delectable for dressy wear was a coat designed tor an older child, for a little girl of seven, let us say. There again the lower part of the full length coat was of black velvet, but the upper part was of light blue broadcloth, the lovely shade that the French call bleu del. This upper part or section rounded down a little in the back and curved

up almost to the waist line in front and was bordered by a narrow line of dark fur, under which the plain velvet lower section joined the cloth.