For the more realistic kinds of clothes the mid-season has considerable advantages over those when winter clothes are shown in torrid temperatures and summer clothes are shown when everybody is wearing furs. By the end of October everybody knows and feels what is wanted. Fur coats have come out and the question of what to wear under them has become actual. There are six clear months of colder weather before us, and if summer comes later winter always comes earlier than is expected.

One of the characteristics of the present mid-season is the sleeves with the deep armhole. Sometimes this is cut in one with a blouse top. Sometimes it is fitted on to a close-fitting bodice worn with a fullish skirt – a remnant of the Dirndl fashion. In dresses this sleeve appears in such materials as wool, moiré, cloqué. It looks elegant with the straight-down fitting bodice, down the front of which are special buttons. Some have fox’s masks, some are looking-glass. They are relied upon to distinguish the dress. Black fur coats have black moiré dresses, made in this fashion. Brown fur coats have brown moiré. Some of the black wool dresses look smart with quilted and embroidered decorations. The wool decorations are also in black flowers and other designs standing out well from the black background. Mainbocher has a black wool dress with the big armhole which has lines of stitched quilting round the neck and passing down the front to the tops of two inset pockets. This is simple and yet strikes the afternoon note at the same time.

Chinese Embroidery

Embroidery finishes many otherwise plain dresses, and it is often of a Chinese nature. The model in the photograph is of cerise crêpe with a cyclamen-coloured taffetas plastron embroidered and spangled in gold and other shiny materials. The pleated skirt is bordered with a band of cyclamen and gold, and it has straight panels back and front. Some models have a high neckline with a tiny embroidered collar piped in strong pink. There are embroidered girdles which go with the collars. Broad bands of embroidery are inset across the bodices of some dresses, and they are in such characteristic colourings as sulphur and blue. Embroidery is also combined with loose decorative pieces. Thus leaves may be raised from the background while the petals of the flower may hang loose and fluttering. A dress of this type was in golden brown wool and was worn with a long box jacket with sleeves and shoulders of golden brown seal.

7 November 1938.

The coloured coat shows no signs of fading out. Astrakhan is seen freely with it, especially where the brighter colours are in question. Strong royal blues, deep-toned reds, are made into double-breasted coats which have short, square draped collars bordered with black astrakhan. Some coats have wide sleeves lined with the astrakhan, which just shows over the edges. Others have small stand-up collars of the fur and a broad band down the front. Others again have a capuchin. These coats are worn with black dresses made tightly and smartly.

High necks and long sleeves are too convenient and comfortable not to be as much in vogue as ever. Some of these dresses, which do for almost anything from six o’clock onwards, have big, full sleeves gathered into a tight wristband, a tight bodice, and a full, gathered skirt. Amusing stuffs are used for dresses of this type, such as net with a woven black stripe, over which are embroidered green, red, and gold stripes in sequins, running vertically down the skirt and diagonally across the bodice. Black wool figures in all sorts of dresses, afternoon and evening alike, the former sometimes in conjunction with a long fringe which turns the bodice into a tunic, the latter consisting of a skirt and nipped-in jacket of the black wool worn with a Persian lamé top with coloured diagonal stripes. Sequins decorate many evening and semi-evening frocks, whether in the form of belts, collars, or flat embroidery.

Materials for evening dresses tend towards the sumptuous. Satins, lamé, velvets, cloqué-lamé are all important this season. Black faille is sumptuous in itself, but it also has jewelled embroidery. Tulle dresses, broken with satin ribbons, make a good many dresses and have an evanescent effect which makes them look sumptuous. There is a good deal of transparent black lace, also used with ribbon stripes. Moiré ribbon is interposed between billows of tulle, and it throws up the lightness of this material. Black velvet ribbon with tulle is another revival, and ribbon is also used for corselet waistbands and for loops of the shoulders of the same dress. Most of the dresses this season depend a good deal upon accessories. There are many of these, such as an evening headdress made of ostrich tips, enamelled buttons like morning glories, crystal and silver buttons with the signs of the zodiac, muffs and scarves joined of astrakhan, huge satin bows at the waistline of a fitted wool jacket, chenille choker scarves, and so forth.