Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1874 — Winter Bonnets at the Paris Milliners’. [ARTICLE]

Winter Bonnets at the Paris Milliners’.

I have just come, early in the season as it is, from inspecting a large number of winter bonnets, prepared for pattern hats for the ensuing season. The shapes will remain pretty much as they were last spring, though a mote decided attempt is to be made to revive* "the oldfashioned gypsy shape, so popular some seventeen years ago. For young girls and youthful matrons'a regular shepherdess hat in velvet, the brim turned up at the left sid* and confined with a bouquet of roses, will be the most graceful and becoming of innovations. I noticed most particularly this morning a rich emerald green velvet bonnet, the crown bordered with leaves formed of emerald steel beads, and the front filled in with a feather trimming dotted closely with emerald beads. A garnet velvet bonnet had the crown formed of two large pufls; right in front were placed three full-blown pink roses, while over the top of the crown, in the division between the two puffs, went a very full branch of heath. The same model was repeated, but with a natural ostrich feather trimming in place of the flowers. A lovely bonnet m chestnut-brown velvet and cafe-au-lait colored silk was trimmed very simply with three large, full-blown, ready-to-tumble-to-pieces roses in different shades of tea and crimson, placed just behind, over a bow of chestnutbrown ribbon, with long ends. A very elegant black velvet bonnet was trimmed with a broad ribbon, black gros grain on one side, and pale green satin oh the other; this ribbon was twisted, or rather laid in folds, around the crown, terminating behind in two short fringed ends, the black end being embroidered with a large leaf in jet. A single jet lily, without leaves, in front of the crown, and a wreath of green rosebuds just showing a tinge of red, which filled up the brim inside, completed this elegant bonnet. Wreaths and bandeaux inside the brim are to be worn. Some that I saw were of autumn leaves with sprigs of dead wood, others of large garden daisies- with centers of gold and steel beads. A bonnet of the new “ pochard” crimson was trimmed with pale-pink roses and the fashionable heath, and one of dark blue velvet of the gypsy shape was very simply trimmed with a dark blue cock’s-feather, and with a single spray of tea-roses inside the brim. Bows of ribbon, with very long ends falling behind, are almost universal adjuncts to the new styles of bonnets. —Lucy Hooper's Letter in Philadelphia Press.