Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 257, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1917 — Medieval Sleeve Well Liked Here [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Medieval Sleeve Well Liked Here

New York. —It Is not possible to diride the new gowns into strongly differing sections. No designer has taken a period and copied her gowns from it With certainty and exactitude. All of the French and American workers have jumbled their history in a way that would give the seeker after truth a brainstorm. ———- ~— It is well for the public at large that the designers do not stick too closely to period -clothes. When the decorators insist that one cannot have a curtain, a vase or a cushion in a room that is drawn from a certain period, we get beautiful pieces of Interior decorative work which should be in a museum, but which have little relationship to an intimate home life. It is wise for every woman to learn, and it would be well if one could only tfjach the artists and decorators the same thing, that exhibition work is one thing, but the kind of work that one must live with is another. We can go to museums or department shops and see period rooms and period dress, but human nature resents the thought of having such limited waking and sleeping hours. Therefore, we greet with pleasure the fact that vastly different periods of history have been dipped into for the new clothes; but anachronism is rife. Cal lot and the Empire. The Callot gowns were tße~laat to get to this cohntryT-anci- tney pre l7 - sented no new note, except the introduction of the First Empire silhouette. Even when Cal Tot took the most symbolic feature of this period, which is the high waistline that slightly girdles the figure just under the bust, she added medieval sleeves to it that the Empress Josephine never wore. _____ The most dominant First Empire frock that Callot has sent over is of brilliant red that Is neither geranium, Japanese nor wine. She calls it “incendie.” It has the richness of a ruby in the light and resembles that jewel to the inexperienced eye more than the flames from a conflagration. This gown is not marred by trimming. As the French say, it goes without a garnish. The neck is not low In the way that Callot is apt to arrange it, and the sleeves not only cover the arms and wrists, but the back of them hangs to the knees when the arms are dropped. When Callot features a new thing. It is bound to be significant, and.

therefore, when she puts a modified angel sleeve In the same gown with an extreme Josephine waistline, she is (.producing something that will be widely copied and worn by women of the most ultrafashionable convictions. Medieval Sleeve Featured. Probably the medieval sleeve ■will receive more attention from American women than the First Empire waistline. This fact is increasingly evident exhibitions of Ameri-can-designed gowns, which have obviously taken the medieval sleeve as ~the chief-feature. An entire chapter of dress could be Written concernftig this sleeve. It has played a most historic part in the evolution of fashion throughout the centuries. America was quite well aware that some type of long, flowing sleeve would reappear this autumn. It was foreshadowed by— the voluminous tulle sleeves that reached to the wrist and hung downward tn points. Every cable from Paris insisted upon the preference shown by the French

women for gowns that did not expose the arms, even though they were half low at the neck. Fantastic gowns in this country, designed for the footlights, brought a good deal of attention to themselves by the Immensity of their sleeves, but these were usually fashioned on some antique Chinese idea, for their square outline was held in place by Chinese tassels and jade bracelets. Then came the first Callot gown with the genuine medieval sleeve. The men who were in Paris early in the summer and who saw the possl-

bllities in the renewal of sueb a sleeve, got it over here before the actual Callot gowns were unwrapped and displayed to the American public. It is not easy to define these sleeves by simply calling them medieval. To our American minds, they are reminiscent of the Abbey drawings. They might have been worn by the ddtlglF ters Of King Lear. And above all, their beauty catches the eye because of the cathedral colors in which they are dyed. Chinese Panels. There is another important feature in the new fashions that no woman can fall to overlook. These are what are known in France as flying panels. They are supposedly adopted from Chinese dress. They are placed on the skirt or on the bodice, and there are extreme gowns in which they swing from the shoulders. Jenny uses them in a gown that is fashioned after those worn by Chinese women. It has an oddly shaped, trousered skirt of chiffon that is'exceedlngly modest and graceful. Over this fabric hang straight, flying panels in irridescent taffeta that is weighted with gold and crystal fringe. The waist is loosely girdled about by a Chinese sash, and the long, floating sleeves of chiffon and crystals are caught in at the wrists and are transparent. Jenny, however, is not the only one who uses panels in whatever way they can be accommodated to the human figure. Doeulllet puts them on onepiece frocks and gathers them together at the waist under a girdle of some ornate, glowing fabric. Mme. Paquin makes an evening gown that is just two panels over a tight, sheathlike skirt, and the two are held in at the waistline by a brilliantly colored sash that somewhat imitates the American bustle silhouette by resolving itself into a bow and ends at the side. Premet, who has turned out such unusually good gowns this year, assembles her flying panels under a sash of Chinese or Japanese embroidery and arranges It in a big looped bow at the side which looks something like a bustle that has slipped—an uncomfortable and disagreeable way that they had of doing in that 188 CL period when women wore them in an uglier form than they are Introduced today. Need Not Match Skirt. It is not necessary to go to any trouble to have the panels match the tight skirt beneath in either color or material. Lanvin insists that the greater the difference between the two, the better the style. She will use hydrangea blue and black together or golden tan and deep purple. Even when these flying panels are not converted into an entire gown, there is a leading fashion which sees to it that most of our frocks look as though they were split up the sides, to show the tightest skirt that we could walk in. Cherult and manv of her colleagues have not forsaken the apron gown. The little accessory which resembles an apron, but is intended for ornament and not service, appears on a sufficient number of new frocks to proclaim Itself still in fashion. (Copyright, 1917, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)- ~

This top coat is made of plum-col-ored satln with a woolenbaok.brocaded In plum and mauve floss. Cottar and cuffs are of black sealskin with edge of Russian fitch. The draw string allows the coat to be either loose or tight at waistline.

This is a blouse for the busy woman. It is made of white butcher**! in en with long shoulder seams. Cuffs, high stock and cravat are made of blue and white cross-barred silk. k