Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 97, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1912 — Ostrich Trimming [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Ostrich Trimming

ABOUT as much ostrich trimming Is sold these days, made up by manufacturers into fancy forms (that is, into decorations differing from the simple plume) as in the regular ostrich plumes which we have known so long. Nothing is or will be, more beautiful than the full, soft, slightly-curled ostrich .plume, known as the French plume, and when one is buying good ostrich, with a view to using it for some time, the French plume is the best Investment. But when one is looking more for novelty than for long service, unequaled decorations are to be found in the displays of fancy ostrich. Besides the new forms, the wreaths and pompons, spirals, crowns and dusters,- fancy ostrich gives the manufacturer wonderful opportunities in color combinations and in shadings. We shall continue to have novelties made of ostrich stock, because of these advantages and because so much stock not otherwise available will work up into effective fancy pieces. Three examples are shown here of hats trimmed with fancy ostrich pieces. As a rule each piece is a complete trimming for a shape and simplifies things for the trimmer. The big black velvet hat, with

slightly drooping brim, shows what | may be called a tall shaft of white ostrich which reminds one of the work of the frost more than anything else. If a small fountain were suddenly clutched by the cold and made solid in the fraction of a second we might expect some such white and fragile mass of feathery ends. Against the rich black of velvet in the hat, it makes a superb show, startling and new, but also elegant. A bell-shaped hat of sealskin shows a bouquet of short full ostrich tips in white. There are just a dozen of these beauties in the cluster. Nothing could be made more simple, but even so the hat* is unsurpassed as a work of milliner’s art. The shape is perfect and the decoration exactly in harmony. A less pretentious hat of gray felt shows a plain flat coilar of velvet and a swirl of shaded ostrich, in which there are glimpses of cerise. The ostrich fibers are long and curled at the ends. Different tones of gray are beautifully combined with cerise, which appears to be veiled by them. Less gray and more cerise appear as the eye climbs the spiral and there is a point of the vivid, color at the end. This is a fine model for a suit hat.

JULIA BOTTOMLEY.