Higher Hats, Lower Waists

Not for three months will the horse chestnut trees in the Champs Elysees raise their white candles in the sun, yet last week on the Place Vendome and Rue de la Paix, spring had already come. The closely guarded private openings of the grand couturiers were over. Buyers who had paid $100 per opening apiece to attend (refunded on the first order) streamed from Paris with orders for their employers and tips for newshawks on the new fashions. French actresses had been given their pick of free gowns for the spring season and the salons were opened for humble citizens who might be expected to pay $150 to $250 per dress.

U. S. women whose ideas of a fashion opening are gathered from cinema or from the circuses which U. S. cloak & suiters stage in large hotels, would be disappointed by a genuine Parisian premiere. There are no orchestras, no spotlights, no elegant young men in cutaways. The rooms are elaborately decorated but a trifle dusty. Harried vendeuses in black elbow hip-swinging models about. Blue-jowled buyers scribble earnestly in little books. There is much confusion. One thing Paris couturiers have learned from Hollywood: to produce at each spring and autumn opening a certain number of freak gowns, shown only for their publicity value. Thus the Swiss designer Heim, opening his new shop on the Champs Elysees, showed sports dresses of natural burlap with clothesline girdles; Jane Regny had a combination evening gown and bathing suit; Gabrielle Chanel had gloves of 18-carat spun gold; Maggy Rouff showed evening gowns with a zipper down the front from neck to hem "for moonlight bathing." Ruffling through their notebooks, buyers reported the following definite trends for 1933 summer fashions: P: Waists will be lower, lines will be definitely straighter and looser. Sleeves are moderately full, shoulders continue high, wide & handsome. The dramatic Elsa Schiaparelli shows Japanese sleeves with artificial shoulder stiffening. Dress lines will accent the vertical this year.

P: In the materials, cotton is more popular than ever, especially for year-round evening gowns. French dressmakers are making elaborate efforts to push a new lacquered satin, even shinier than the cire satin of last year, even more trying for all but the most statuesque figures.

P: A definite style note is the new high-crowned hats, adaptations of Arab fezzes, pill boxes, Cossack and clown hats, now sweeping France as copies of the Camel cigaret slouch hat are sweeping U. S. department stores. According to smartchart scouts, the originator of the season's high hattery is the lovely Comtesse Francois-Guillaume de Maigret who persuaded Maria Guy to adapt a Tunisian Chechia on her return from an African vacation, and wore it with devastating success at Parisian race tracks. Other milliners hurried in with other high hats. P: Plaid evening dresses are enormously popular. In colors navy blue leads black for street wear; "string color," a tannish off-white, is most popular for sports. P: Elaborate gloves, jeweled, of wool, taffeta, velvet, net, are shown in most collections.

P: In general style, the 1890 feeling of last autumn continues; there are Gibson Girl tiered skirts, dust ruffles, flared backs.

U. S. observers show marked preference for the creations of Elsa Schiaparelli, a lady who like Author de Maupassant has always been more popular in the U. S. than in Paris. Mme Schiaparelli's success with U. S. women may be due to the fact that for five acutely uncomfortable years she lived in New York, married to a Pole to whom she bore a daughter. She was born in Italy, niece of famed Astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, discoverer of the canals on Mars. Spurred by Il Duce, Italian designers were ready last week to challenge the supremacy of French, designers. Italian newspapers loyally helped with scoffs at French styles, pleas to "Buy Italian," and cheers for a true moda Italiana on the grounds "not merely of stylishness for women, but of esthetic, economic, even hygienic self-assertion." The Fashions Board of Turin, an organization of Fascist dressmakers, announced its first Spring Showing of Italian styles in a converted armory. Scouts reported that the 100% Italian styles will be robes de style and adaptations of Renaissance robes such as Paris sponsored five or six years ago.

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