In Paris, where, both to men and women, fashion has a standing equal to that of politics, art or the drama, the “new shape” of a woman, as determined by the Paris couture houses, is greatly applauded.
It is a logical continuance of a line which came into being last year when, in fear of strikes or riots, women hid slim dresses of great elegance under sombre, vast coats, the couture naming this trend “the precious nut in the husky shell.”
The slim dress line will now flood the stores of the world. It is one particularly applauded by war-nervous American buyers, apprehensive of a return to fabric restrictions at home.
A ‘Second Skin’
Schiaparelli, making her best collection in years, announces that dresses must be made like “a woman’s second skin,” with shoulders smoothed, sleeves close, bust emphasised, and the skirt close cut. Indeed, dresses have recovered their position as the most important item in a woman’s wardrobe in place of the “little suits” of past seasons. Slimness is broken by diagonal movements of front tunics, spiral tunics or low flouncings, the neatness of cut designed to be flattering to the deliberately tiny head with close-dressed hair and skull-fitting caps. Fath’s white feather cap with forward-blown feathers is typical of the new hatlines.
Coats have changed from the vast swing of last year to the straight neatness of this, but the majority are made in husky fabrics (one house calls them “Shaggy dog” materials). They are seldom full-length, but show two or three inches of the dress below. They have small fur collars matching a three-inch hemming of flat fur or, alternatively, have big collars, often of lynx, rising up above the head as if to protect it in days of tempest.
Because these coats, with their superbly coloured linings typical of the year, go over suits as well as dresses, many of the suits are built to correspond to the word of praise which most pleases the French: they are “refined.” Molyneux and Dessès join Dior in showing some with longer, curved and stiffened basques, but most houses keep the basque short and neat, waistlines nipped, shoulders sleeked, truly urban and sophisticated. Nor do skirts and jackets necessarily match; the jacket may be in cloth, the skirt in velvet.
This is an edited extract.
