Evening Star Newspaper, November 25, 1923, Page 83

Evening Wraps Now Made With Purpose of G 7z 7 ON LEFT 1S AN ERMINE WRAP WHICH IS IMITATED FREQUENTLY IN LESS EXPENSIVE WHITE FURS. IT IS UNTOUCHED WITH COLOR OR ORNAMENTATION, BUT A GOLD NET TURBAN GOES WITH IT WHICH IS TWISTED AROUND THE HEAD IN INDIAN STYLE, RISING UP IN FRONT AND COVER- > THE EARS. SUCH TURBANS ARE KEPT ON AT MOST EVENING GAYETIES AS A SU! UTE FOR THE HEADDRESS. AT RIGHT IS A WRAP MADE OF THREE MATERIALS—BROCADE, CLOTH OF SILVER AND BLACK VELVET. CAPE, THE HOOD HELD' BY AN IMMENSE T. IT IS DRAPED AFTER THE MA NER OF AN ARABIAN HOODED EL OF SILVER METAL THREADS. : BY ARKNE RITTENHOUSE. SENSE of fitness compels us toward evening wraps. Only those who fare not forth after the lights are lit can shrug an indifferent shoulder to gay and pro- tective garments that serve for friv- olous diversion and nothing else, As for the other kind, the kind of ‘women who go about at night, no matter how frugally they man their winter wardrobes, they realize that # day coat and a night wrap are two separate and distinct pleces of ap- parel. It is the opinion ef well dressed ‘women that it is far better to stay at home and read a'book after 7 o'clock p.m. than go forth in & smart evening frock covered by a woolen wrap that has served in the dust and toll of the day. * One never feels that the lining of such garments is fresh enough for the bare shoulders and arms or even for the high bodice of a light and transparent frock. Be right In every detail or stay at home is the present creed in dr Better one perfect costume than several imperfect sec- tions of several outfits. If that lesson could be learned by every woman, half the dress problem would be solved. Dressmakers insist that amateur evening wraps aro botches. The canny and skilled home dressmaker finds otherwise. She can put together a protective coat or cape with wool interlining that serves her purpose well. She can afford one such each year. Tt takes s spasm of extrava- gance to possess one of the shop kind at Its best. But the problem of what to have for an evening wrap !s more vexatious than merely the choice between the shop and sewing room. What are the activities of her kind of life? Has she a motor or does she walk or use the train and street cars? Does she freeze at the first touch of winter or 1s she one of the fortunates who go lightly clad without a sneeze? Does she demand fur or is she comfortab! in chiffon velvet lightly lined? Doei she like to wrap herself in a volumi- nous cape or have her hands left free by a coat? Such problems must be individually met. She must put cotton in her ears when the trade sirens sing. Fur won't do for certaln climates. Pale brocades won't do for certaln lives. Metallic tissues won't do for street cars. Short capes won't do for motor icars. Short coats won't do for walk- Ing. One wants something brilllant for the theater. Such are the staccato thoughts that come to each purchaser. * % % ¥ J¥ » woman wants to add the price of & day coat to that of an evening wrap, killing two birds *with one stone, {a the belief-that she will have a garment for every hour spent in the open, she has reason on her side in buying a fur garment. She will never feel quite well dressed in the evening, however, unleas she wears informal gowns that suit informal af- fairs. The choice of this season in fur wraps that serve only in the eve- ning°1s ermine and its many imita- tors. A short coat of such pelty is suitable for the day, but only youth should wear it-" A long coat of it should never see daylight. The best of these wraps are deco- rated with gold, although some re- | verse the fashion for ermine on black. Heavy gold tassels swinging from thick gold cords often give brilliance. Silver is used. but Is not as effective | as gold. A few white wraps are lined {with black velvet which: 18 striped | above the hem and wrists with gold | salloon. - Gold metatlic- tissus® collars OVEMBER 25, 1323—PART 5. are added to.plaln white capes, which are cut circular, ‘There are several clever and sub- stantial imitations of ermime, also woven fur fabrics, that enable = woman to appear very well indeed for a season, If not longer. She may prefer these to plain cloth or velvet. Inexpensive peltry is used also as a lining for velvet and brocade wraps, It should not be coarse. The hairs should not be rough and long. There should be sufficient suppleness to fol- low the swing of the outer fabric. It is more easlly removed than wool in- terlining when temperate weather ar- rives, which {8 in its favor. If the wrap is not of fur, an effort hould be made to add immense col- lar and cuffs of it. They are lead- ing all the other fashions and give more warmth than other decoration. ‘When one works with yelvet there 1s a chance to turn & protective wrap into something pictorial. In this fleld medievalism has gripped the de- signers. There's a Chinese green vel- vet coat with a splendid collar of gray fox that was never fashioned for walking, but Is a beautiful thing for an entrance into a restaurant. ‘Its sleeves carry the full glory of line and grace. They are walst deep where they begin and wrist tight where they end. They wrinkle the length of the arm. From each fore- arm drops a ecarf of velvet that reaches the floor. Such sleeves are Incorporated into several of the crepe de chine frocks from Paris. The dressmakers have found that duvetyn makes the best lining for velvet and satin wraps, 2 it obviates the necessity of padded interlining. which Is clumsy at the best. It may match the outer surface or pleasapt- 1y contrast with it. Too much bril- liancy is taboo. Chinese blue, dove gray, water green, leaf brown, russet red, are colors that, in duvetyn, are particularly adapted to evening wraps. Choose any of these without fear. * % LACK velvet ls the first color and fabric chosen dy the majority; but any color, except ved, pink or pale blue, is good. The softer the shade the better. Black and white combination has no superior in fash- ion coloration teday. but there are women who are weary of its con- stant repetition, and who, llke a cer- tain heroine, need a thread of color in clothes to make life gayer. The Chinese and East Indian col- orings are wisely offered as an offset to black and white. Women of any age can wear.them. The revival af rose pink and even pastel shades for evening gowns has not reached to wraps. It may, but it is safer to keep what the Orlent has to offer rather than anticipate a change to Watteau tints. ‘The only way to make a satin wrap look and feel comfortable in winter weather is to heap Its surface with fur. Even then the job Is not quite done. It's not a fabric for snow and sleet, but as women once wore chiffon capes without complaint, there is no reason to believe they will cavil at sturdier satin. It is & season, hap- pily, when warmth is fashionable. Satin for wraps is merely a caprice of the extremists. It should be qn- couragad only when duvetyn lining and- fur decoration eclipse it. Broadcloth is most acceptable. Tt carries a duvetyn lining also. Its re- vival for coat suits and one-piece frocks this season attracted the at-| tention of those who make evening ¢overings. In gray, with fox orma- mentation to match, it is admirable. (Copyright, 1823. iving Protection . MEDIEVAL WRAP OF CHINESE GREEN VELVET WITH PICTURE SLEEVES THAT DROP IN SCARFS TO THE FLOOR. THE SKIRT IS CUT IN TWO TIERS AND FASTENS AT ONE SIDE. THE HIGH COL- LAR IS OF GRAY FOX. IT RUNS TO THE WAIST AND CAN BE THROWN BACK AS A CAPE. Up-to-Date Czechoslovakia Enjoys Well Balanced Industrial Life BY FRANK G. CARPENTER. PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia. ZECHOSLOVAKIA! The name is a new one in the geogra- phies. It sounds like Ultima | Thule, and it seems to indi- cate the jumping-off place of crea- tlon. The country has no abiding | place in the minds of millions of Americans, and I doubt if one man out of ten on the street can iden- tity it. Stlll, it contains five times as many people as Denmark, seven times as many ay Norway and | ten or more times the number in Bsthonla or Turkey. It is a country right in the heart of the busiest and best part of Europe, and one which has already taken its place in the| finance, business and politics of this| slde of the world. Others of the new | republics seem on a more or less un- | stable foundation. Their currency is | ‘wabbling, and it takes a cartload of | their money to buy a square meal. Here in Cxechosiovakia the crown, which corresponds to the French gold franc in par value, is now about thirty | to the dollar, and it is so stable that the people are doing business with all the world. Most of the other new republics are largely land or farm propositions, Czechoslovakia 1s a live, industrial entity containing mighty factories, ready to turn out goods not only for the nation, but for the other peoples of Europe, South America, and even for us. I came across the Atlantlc with a representative of the largest of the Chicago mail-order houses. He was on his way to Europe to buy goods for his firm, and one of the most Important lands on his list was this. Czechoslovakia will give him glaesware and notlons, laces and em- brolderies, linens and other textiles, necklaces, brooches and similar nov- eltles which our woman will skimp | vaki their house money to buy. But first let me tell you where the fand Is. Czechoslovakia is the “hot dog” In the great sandwich of central Burope. It is a plece of fat sausage lying between Germany and Poland on the north and Austria, Hungary and Rumania on the south. The tail of the sausage is in the Carpathlan mountains on the edge of Rumanla, and the great fat head, about 600 miles away, is right in the heart of industrial Germany. The country is long and narrow. Turn it on the map of Europe and it would reach from Mtlan to Londoy; drop it down on the United States and it' would extend from New York to Detroit. From porth to south at its widest the boun- daries are not as far apart as New: York and. Baltimore, and in some the country is not wider than from Baltimore to Washington. It {s almost seven times aa blg as Mas- sschusetts #nd nearly the size of Florlda or Iowa. * %k 8 stretch of land varies.’ in character. It is . composed of three provinces or states. At the west i{s Baohemia, half the size of by mountains. It is peppered with factories and almost every inch of it is intensively cultivated. It has & population equal to that of Great- er New York. In the east is Slo- almost as large. It is a land of mountains, the high Carpathians, which have scenery-that vies with that of Switzerland or the Tyrol. Ttls| @ land of farms, but is also exceed- ingly rich in other natural resourees. Its people number more than three times those of Detrolt. Between these two states lies Moravia, which partakes somewhat of the character of each of the others. It is as big as Massachusetts and its population approximates that of Chicago. Czechoslovakia as a whole s one of the best lands in Europe from & de- velopment standpoint. It has a fat ®oil, and its farmers are proportion- ately greater In number than those- of any other European gountry, ex- cept France and Russia. Four-fifths of+the mines of the old Empire of Austria-Hungary are to be found within its borders. It has soft and hard coal, producing more than 30,- 000,000 tons in a year, while it mines annually 2,000,000 tons of iron and its oil wells yleld 10,000 tons’ of pe- troleum. It has gold, silver, cop- per, tin, opals and garnets, and in Bohemia is the richest radium mine in the world. Its annual output Is two grams, an amount which, I ven- ture, may be somewhere near the size of & pin head or small pea. The land is one of the most richly wooded of Europe. Of every' three acres one is covered with trees, and the annual timber cut amounts to more than enough to make a board- walk an inch thick and five feet in width from Prague to ‘tie moon. Czechoslovakia « has altogether about 14,000,000 inhabitants, which is about twice as many as Holland or Belglum, about three times as many as Switzerland, and about one third as many as Italy or France. It is more than double the number left in the new Austria. The bulk of these people are Slava, They belomg to the same race as the Rur=lans, and ‘thelr civilization and strength form a striking object lésson of what the Slavs, who number perhaps 150,000, 000, may do in the future. = The Csechs, Moravians and Slovakg total more than 10,000,000 and they come of the very same stock. ' The new republic bas, in 2ddition, something llke 3,000,000 Germans, who have their own' language and their own 8chools and theaters,’ In time it is belleved that the whole will be weld- ed together into the mnew nation. Many of the Germans are of Slav origin and are classed only because they guage and have been allied to that nationality in the past. * % %k % 'Foun otit of every ten of the peo- ple of Czechoslovakis live on the ©hjo, & rich plain almost surtounded farms or in.small villages, hut there “THE CHARLES BRIDGE IS ONE OF THE SEVEN CROSSING THE MOLDAU RIVER AT PRAGUE. THE TOWER IS DECORATED WITH THE FIGURES OF THIRTY PATRON SAINTS OF THE COUNTRY.” are several large cities and many small industrial centers. Prague, where I am writing, compares in population with Baltimore; St. Louls and Boston. It is the capital and chief business center. Brno, the in- dustrial capital of Moravia is about the size of Birmingham. or Atlanta, and Bratislavia on the Danube, the biggest town in Slovakia, is approxi- mating 100,000. Pelzen (Pllsen), Bo- hemia, with its steel mill whioh em= ployed 30,000 hands during the war and where some of the best beer of Europe is made, is about the same size. The few other cities are of §0,~ 000 and under and most of them small. The trafic communications “are good. The land is one of rivers snd rallways. The Danube forms part of its southern boundary, giving access by. water to the Black sea and the Mediterranean. This eity of Prague 1s situated on the Moldau. which flows igto the Eibe and thence out.to the- ocean. The viver ia navigable all the way to the North sea. The Elbe also cuts through Bohemis, and it is now proposed to make & canal from it to the Danube, and one from the Oder to the Danube, well. The Eilbe- Danubs canal ~ has already been started, and they eéxpect to complete it In elght or ten years. It will cross the divide between the North and Black seas on ths Bohemlan-Mora- vian frontler at an aititude of one thousand feat, the elevation deing ac- qomplished by locks. The Csechs have & seaport at Ham- burg where they sre given certain wharves by the peace treaty. They have also wharf rights at Stattin, on the Baltic, at the mouth of the Oder, and wharves at Tricate at the head of the Adriatic sea, 20 that although their republjie is In the Interior. It has access to thres of. the more importent sesports of Burope. "7 came by rallway from Munich to| -Prague, . The train eXcellent and “THE CZECH PEASANT WOMAN, HER HEAD COVERED BY A GAY HANDKERCHIEF AND HER BACK BENT BENEATH A GREAT BASKET OF HAY, IS A FAMILIAR FIGURE.” rvice 18 good. The country is covered with a network of roads. Czechoslovakia has enough tracks to reach twice as far as from Baltimore to Seattle, and leave enough over to extend from St. Paul to New Orleans. Every part of the republic can be reached by railway. Last year the roads carried more than 200,000,000 persons and over §0,000,000 tons of freight. The stations are of stone, snd there is one in Prague, named atter Prosident Wilson, which would ‘| be & credit to any American city. Travel is as comfortable as in any part of Europe. There are first, sec- ond and third class accommodations. I took the first class and, with my secretary, had a:compartment at less than half the cost of firstvelass ace commodations in Switserland. We paid seven or eight cents & mile. Tho second-class fares aye about three or four cents and the third aboyt two cents. - There was no diniAg car; but there were plenty of chances to eat at the station buffets, and at Pilsen beer was brought out to the passengers and sold at ten cents z quart. We had some trouble in settling with the beer peddler who would not belleve that three thousand Germans marks was ample exchange for one Czecho- stovaklan crown. Csechs, who were formerly despised by the Germans, to know that their money is 5o much the better. I can imagine how Bismarck would feel if he woke from the dead, donned the sult of clothes he wore when he passed away, and tried to pay some of his bills in Bohemia with the Ger- man marks left in the pockets. It would now cost bim millions of marks for a single dinner, while in his day 1,000,000 marks were worth $260,000. I HAD a good chance to see some- thing of the industry of Bohemia on the train ride to Pragué. After To% % ¥ K It must delight the | | crossing the boundary we rode four or five hours through a beehive of work. Every station had its factories | of one kind or another, and the coun- | ltry was a crazy quilt of rich farms. | The Bohemian basin is well watered, | and the farms are better than those of any tract of a similar size in the | United States. i The buildings are substantial and larger and more costly than ours. I saw hundreds of huge barns, made of stone or brick covered with stucco and roofed with red tiles. The hou: of the owners are commodious and the farmstead often consists of a| dozen or 5o large buildings, some of which are given up to the laborers. | Everything has been palnted and put | in excellent repair since the world | war, and the country seems to be | prosperous. | At Eger, near the boundary be- tween Germany and Czéchoslovakia,’| where we passed through the cus- | toms, we stopped several hours, and I | took a car and rode through the coun-| try. Every one I met seemed happy | and enthuslastic, and all spoke proud- | Iy of the new republic. They are | still rejoicing in thelr freedom from Germany and Austria. (1 was surprised at the number of Imumn and oxen I saw in the flelde. | 1 ‘The methods of cultivation are old| fashioned, and women and cattle fur- | The ! nish a large part of the labor. ! oxen draw the plows and carts, while the women hoe and weed and help in the harvesting. { 1 saw some swinging | scythes and cutting grass in. the meadows. They also draw carts, and some of them carry, slung to their backs, great cornucopla baskets, so heavily double. The men and women work in gangs in the flelds. Often I saw one man and twenty women, and the man bossed the gang. I photographed some girls digging potatoes. They were clad in blue cotton, with hand- kerchiefs wrapped around their heads. They laughed as I snapped the cam- era. Some of them were good look- ing. So likewise were the oxen—fine, burly animals—which pulled by their heads instead of their necks, as with us. A strap. Is fastened across the forehead just under the horms, and this fs hitched to tugs on the plow. They pull loads the same way. I am told yokes are used farther east. I like Prague. It is.a live, up-to- date city, although the white hair of the middle ages still hangs on its shoulders. It has more enterprise in business than any capital of the new republics I have yet visited. Its people seem prosperous. The stores are large and full of fine goods, and the spirit of the people is excellent The population of the city is now in the neighborhood of 700,000, and it expects to keep step with the growth of the nation. It is already creeping out nto the country. There is a necklace of smokestacks about the old town, and many new factories are golog up In the suburbs. loaded as to bend them The streets are wide and paved with Beigilan blocks. The sldewalks in the chlef business section are of black and white mosaic set in pate terns, the stones being about an Inch square. Tn front of my hotel there a mosale pavement at least twenty feet wide, ‘laid in the form of a checkerboard of black and white blocks. A queer feature heére {s the arcades, which cut in from one side of the street to another at right angles or £0 through the block from street to street. These arcades are twenty or irty feet wide and walled with stores often fifty or more feet in height. * £ * k "THERE seem to be plenty of banks, and not a few of them have Czech-American olerks. I cashed my | 1etter of credit today at a bank where the manager was from Pittsburgh. He tells me he can make more money here than in America, and that this is the belief of many of the Czechs who have returned here from our country. The banker says he 1s in- troducing American methods. snd quick service instead of having the depositors sit down and wait for the leisure of the clerks, like so many barber-shop customers, I have been riding today in an au- tomobile from one government bulld- ing to another. This new republie has jumped into being like Minerva from the head of Jove, full-fledged and equipped. It took us generatlions to bulld our capitol and put up our great department structures. Czecho- slovakia had only to reach out her bands and take what she wanted, as the Austrians left her all of the buildings she needed. The mighty castle on the great bluff overhanging the Moldau river, erected by the kings of Bohemia, has been turned into a home for the president and offices for all the government branches. This castle is known as the Hradehin. It covers several hundred acres and is a veritable labyrinth of tmmense buildings surrounding courts with tunnel-like passages, through which I drove from one to another. It is antiquated and badly arranged for government offices, but it can ac- commodate thousands of clerks and most of the government activities. In the center of the maze is the famous Cathedral of St. Vitus, which was begun In 1344, almost 1,000 years ago, and Is still building. At least, thére fs a scaffold about it and a small portfon’ stifl uncompleted. I don’t know whether this wiil ba the president's church or not, but it would make a notable one. It is dedicated to St. Vitus, who is said to have come here from Rome about 300 vears after Christ to glve the people salvation. These will be new surroundings for St. Vitus. He was not only an evange- list, but also a physiclan. He had that faith that could move mountains, and charity as well. He performed many miracles, including the cure of diseases of the nerves. [ (Copyright, 1023, Carpenter's World Travels.) i