Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 158, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1918 — Frill Epoch For Children’s Wear [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Frill Epoch For Children’s Wear

New York.—Do not take, the fashion of children’s clothes for granted. Do cot fall into the error of going on the old methods. There is as much ebb and flow in the tide of juvenile costumery as in adult, so watch straws and then go with the current, is the advice of a prominent fashion writer. Patterns cannot be handed down from one child’s wardrobe to another. What was worn last season is usually out of the picture by the time the new season begins. Things were not always according to this schedule of variation. For centuries children were dressed alike. Glimpse backward over the portraits that hang in our museums to prove this. The torturous clothes that were put bn Infants three centuries ago will most probably make the modern woman, filled to the eyes as she is with the schedules of hygiene and sanitation, want to scream alQud at the misery that was inflicted. _ Even the wooden sabots and long full skirts of the small Dutch girl, with her white rabbit, stirs in the mother of the nioment a violent feeling of reform. We grieve far more for the discomfort of the young man than for the actual grief of the old. As near to nudity as the law allows has been the modern interpretation of children’s clothes, and we have felt that by hardening their legs and arms through constant exposure in the formative years, we are handing them a talisman against weakness and disease in the settled seasons of life. The elimination of the garter that binds, the corset that restricts, the skirt that hampers, the sleeves tliat cover, the shoe that pinches, has aided the doctor and the teacher. Touch of Military. Does your particular memory go back to the days when to dress a boy child as a Highlander was to prove yourself in the fashion? The swagger of the Gordons was not even omitted from the clothes for] small girls. Scotch bonnets were as common among children as they are now among men. Whether or not it brought the passionate and rebellious shame of Penrod, plaid kilts were placed on boys I whose faces burned with indignation at the thought of wearing skirts and showing their knees. Rakish bonnets with a gay feather were perched over scowling brows, and only the Lord Fauntleroys of life were pleased with

themselves. And now, when the “Ladies from Hell” have made the costume the cause of wild admiration of every half-grown .boy on two continents, the designers will not reinstate it, nor will chastened mothers request their boys to wear it. So that in itself is good evidence that we have wisely and, let us say, forever gotten over the desire for the foolishly pictorial in Juvenile clothes. But it is not possible for the war to leave all forms of dressing free from its sinister influence. Itjouches the clothes for the young In a gentle way, and the way is not objectionable;. Middle yduth, aS it is expressed at seventeen and younger, finds the avion of France and Italy the most picturesque fields from which to draw a fashion here and there. The oblong cap, the flowing cape with one end draped over the shoulder, are neat and attractive fashions to use up for the summer season. An illusive kind of Sam Brown belt is becogolng a bit common, but it too finds

an abiding place on the coat of a slim little suit Now. however, that such a big ma-, jority of young women find that public opinion permits them to wear breeches, cap and coat for war relief work, they are less apt to use up the military ideas in the more feminine costumes.

In children’s clothes there is little of the war that can be adopted, but

the plaid sashes from Scotland and Naples and Rome, the short black coats, the multiple pockets, are evidences that war has thrown its shadow\4osmward to the cradle. Adopting Fashions of Age. Between the nursery and middle youth there is a mass of children that must be dressed well throughout the hot season, and for these the designers have turned out enough fashions to supply the demand of a continent of grownups. They smack of sophistication, some of them, and are taken directly from the clothes of their elders. There is the surplice bodice, the Martha Washington collar which resembles a handkerchief, the patentleather belt, • the umbrella skirt, and the short sleeves —which, after all, age has merely, pilfered from youth this spring. There are still touches of an older war in the retention of the top hat and cape coat in two colors, which was adopted from the directoire and the consulate, after the designers could not force them upon women with any degree of success last winter. The organdie frocks, which spring like mushrooms from Bar Harbor to the Florida coast this year, are found to be admirable for youth when it is parading itself in the afternoon. It goes well on even the smallest girl. It is chosen in colors as well as white, and now that colored ribbon sashes are revived by old and young, the organdie takes on the atmosphere of the flowery part of the nineteenth century and fits into the landscape as the sport clothes never do. Grown-Up Fashions In Miniature. It is a fact that you cannot fall to observe, if you have had occasion to study the recently produced clothes for little girls that some of the styles borrowed from—or, rather, suggested by —the styles launched this spring for mamma’s clothes have done rather better in the juvenile version than in the adult. Whatever may be the fate of the eton jacket in grown-up costuraery, true it is that not one woman in ten can wear it to advantage. In short, the eton jacket style goes very much better with children than with their mothers or big sisters. Likewise the collar that is always part of lha picture with the eton . jacket—the round-about collar, that seems to make double chins triple, and hides all the prettiest curves in the grown woman’s neck without concealing any of the ugly ones. It is eminently becoming on, a little girl; in fact, one' never knows what an entirely adorable spot is to be found at the back of a little girl’s neck until one has seen it in thia eton collar. I (Copyright, IMS, by the McClure NeWspe . par

The cape takes on new grace as worn by the younger generation. Immensely useful for seashore or country is this cape of navy blue serge lined with old rose and blue figured silk.

Entirely demure and feminine Is the effect of this pink-and-blue flowered muslin frock. The fichu Is of white organdie; the girdle of -blue taffeta fastened with pink rosebuds. The hat is of blue straw, with deep ruffle of taffeta and pink rose over left ear. Long velvet loop finishes the Kate Greenaway picture.