The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 17, 1905, Page 29

THE SAN FRANCISCO -SU VDAY CALL. e Promised Are Negl Great Nighfingale Fur-trimmed Beautiful Robes, Evelet Em- an Vel- was. ———p Lovely Lo The Negligee Lines. A princess dress is one of the hand- somest things scen lately. Its founda- tion is a cream colored crepe de chine, most gorgeously soft and clinging, and 80 dressy that it might answer for a dinner gown. It is made on the em- pire style, with a very short back and a very short front, while the hips are slightly fitted. The back is trimmed with bands of Renaissance lace laid imple tea gown a deal of work, for rt now needs € as though it were a dinner dress. flat across tne back, while extending from the shoulders right down to the bottom of the train there are wide bands of the same lace. There is a touch of color seen in the rosettes which trim this and other gowns, and these rosettes, by the way, are made of apricot silk showing a faint touch of pink—a color always good - with everything. In the middle of each rosette there is a little knot of red ribbhon, giving the whole the ap- pearance as of a rose. Shaded roses @nd shaded rosettes are immensely pretty and very effective upon house gowns, too. The woman who is going to wear pretty gowns this season should inter- est herself right away in the girdle proposition. The girdle can be made ®o0 that it looks well upon the negligee or the gown, or o it can be worn with the dinner dress or the street costume. It can be rather broad in its lines and £0 beautifully finished that it will do for any occasion. Girdles d Ribbon Trimmed Gowns. A very popular girdle is one which is pointed in the front and narrow in the back. The front points are very much stiffened, and they are cut not too sharp. The girdle is made of some pretty new material, in some one of the new shades, and, speaking of girdle shades, there is nothing any more at- tractive than the dahlia tones, which are two or three in number, and make up admirably in silk, velvet, satin or cloth. The cloth girdle is not to be despised and, if you will look a little at the mohairs, the pongees, the popiins and the brilliantines, you will find materials which are just the thing for the mak- ing of a handsome, deep zone. Take the new silk pongee which looks exactly like corded silk and can be bought ‘for about 30 cents a yard. It s soft and easily folded. It comes in all the new tones and if made into a girdle and piped with a contrasting color and decorated with small rosettes it makes as handsome a trimming for the walist as one would want to find. The number of ribbon trimmed gowns which one sees this year can scarcely be counted, for they are so numerous that they quite defy full Inspection. There are gowns that are trimmed with masses of shirred ribbons. One of the lovellest ribbon dresses of the season was worn by Mrs. George Keppel at a luncheon given by her in her London home the other day. It was an exceedingly informal affair and Mrs. Keppel wore that which she was pleased to call a tea gown.” Really it was a most elaborate thing in s:lk ana lace, profusely trimmed with ribbon. There were numerous ribbon roses and there were ribbon ruffles and rosettes, knots and bows without number. The yoke, which was a pointed affair, had the points stitched flat, while under- neath them there ran a ribbon which was tied in a big flat bow in the middle of the front, while a similar bow trim- med the back. Across the front of the walist and around the foot of the skirt were narrow ribbon shirrings and the girdle was a mass of puffed ribbon, and thus there was completed one of the prettiest tea gowns of the season, Bargains in New Materlals. If you will look carefully wnen you are selecting your material you can really get things that are ridiculously cheap. It does not follow that because a stuff is pretty it is expensive, and as an instance of this, there may be mentioned the challis of the year which comes in the most dellcate tones, some of them plain and some figured, and which make up into the most beau- tiful gowns. A lovely challis was made in the orchid shades. There was a very faint orchid challis background, while upon this background there were rufiles of deep orchid taffeta with lace falling over each of the ruffles. They were, by the way, accordion plaited, and they are deeper in the back than in the front. A series of these flounces, as they might better be called, trimmed the skirt up to the knees where there was a band of insertion to serve as a finish. The upper part—for it was a princess gown—was developed along the same lines. They are doing a great deal this year with ribbons in the way of run- ning ribbon through lace. Take any kind of lace, no matter how cheap, and run a ribbon through it, and you will get an idea of what is meant by a rib- bon-trimmed lace. You can choose something which Is very light and fine, though not necessarily expensive, and you can run it with ribbon of the cheapest variety. When you have com- pleted your work you will find that you have a trimming which cannot be ex- celled for delicacy and beauty, no mat- ter how much you may have economized upon it Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt received three lady callers the other morning dressed in a charming gown of black and white. The foundation was a black crepe de chine, and upon this there were black taffeta ruffies, while over each ruffle there fell a trimming of lace run with narrow ribbons. This style of trimming is one of the very prettiest that can be seen this season. Making Your Lace Look Like Real There is always something new to be told about lace, and a Irench modiste the other day quite voiced the senti- ment of the season when she said: “We are trimming almost exclusively with lace, and from experience we have learned how to use our lace so that it shows to best advantage. “There was a time,” said she. “when cheap lace looked like cheap lace, but this year it is quite different. All laces look like the real, and it is only very extravagant women who are willing to invest money for the high-priced im- ported varfeties. They much prefer to buy the imitation and trust to skill to conceal the fact that it is not the true article. “There are tricks in all trades, and particulariy in that of the dressmaking trade. This year modistes are studying laces with & visw to making look twice as expansive as they real- ly are. To say that we succeed is not claiming too much for our skill. A few instancc : of this will serve to convince the most skeptical know what I am talking about. I bave transformed laces in the most wonderful manner. It was only yes'erday that onme of my best customers came to me with a strip of lace about clght inches in wid and perhaps six yards long. ‘I am an jous,” said she, ‘to have a lace which shall look pree ly like 1 bought this lace for 6u cants & yard, and now I 1 ke to have it tran formed into ce whieh shall 1 like something c & a great deal more.’ “I took the lace in my hands and ex- amined it. It wes a very cheap imita- tion Valenciennes, and on inspecting it closely I came to the coneiualon that its only merit was that it was very thin, for, if it had been a coarse Italian Valenciennes, I could have done noth- ing whatever with it. ‘Leave the lace with me, madam,’ I said, ‘and I will see what I can do.’ “When she had gone I took some old chiffon which I happened te have on hand, and, working on it very cautiously, I lined the lace with the chif- fon. Then 1 made a ruffle of cream colored taffeta and over this I placed the lined lace. Finally I shirred whole in such a manner that 1 made a little heading al of the flounce, and, so, I set the ruffle ¢ the skirt. I arranged It rather scanti in front and full in the back, and w I had finished you would have that the gown was trimmed with a hundred dollar lace flounce, so good was the deception. “The dress, which, by the way, was a negligee, could be worn until dinner time. It had a long lace coat which had once been made of plain white summer embroidery. It was made out of English eyelet embroidery of the cheapest variety, but I took it and washed all the stiffness out of it, after which I dipped it in coffee, giving it an even tone. Then I lined It with deep white organdile and around the edge I set a ruffle of cheap lade. A fichu draped the neck and was caught at the front with a big bow of prune colored velvet. You would have sworn that it was an embroidered peignoir, cor ing not less than $500. Indeed, I have cost & m: a one which this modiste is for ail dressmak- at they are using all K s year to so handle lace is givew to them that it will look very expensive variety. You can eceive your best friend in pect e is made elegantly deceptive in e of seve ways, the most common 5 & the lace. It with organdie, t taffeta or crepe device is to tint the T heap ce, take a red silk and run around nd loosely, using follow this first n r ome, this like gold your silk use a very give you quite one which you Something About the New Sleeves. gale sleeve is worn & great deal upon the tea gown, for it s comfortable and pretty, and it can be made at home, which is a great thing in its favor. If you have an old sleeve rather large and at the hand, you can slit it right up to the shoulder, wide open. Now you will ies of big eyelet you can rum rib- il tie in little bows or it you do mot sk of making the take rings nicely w them to the you can run ribbons se sleeves must be d trimmed with fur. sleeves had silk puffs 2 the ribbons, but for e open, so as to show lerneath, or. what Is iil, the bare arm. And thus oir 1s complete. iere is a negligee sleeve which ia o yards wide and made of Orfental It is a great success, for it is becoming to all arms, both thin and fat. with Ona lovely p: pull it betw e the peignec MARING OF PERFUMES FTTIMES the question is asked Why are perfumes so expensiv Not long ago a well dressed woman went Into a drug store and asked for Persian orchid, a scent the delightful fragrance of which she had recently discovered. The per- fume was produced, and she was some- what astonished to find that her cash:- fer's check for an ounce bottle of it read $. For a moment she was in- clined to think the clerk had made a mistake and when she asked for an ex- planation of the cost she learned some- thing about the manufacture of per- fumes which she had never known be- fore To begin with, the Persian orchid is an exceedingly rare flower and when grown in the Eastern greenhouses readily brings a price of $40 a dozen. It is not from these blossoms that the perfume is made, however. The gather- ing of orchid flowers in' their native haunts is attended with considerable danger and expense and it requires an astonishing number of blooms to pro- duce a very little bit of the essence from which the commercial product is made. Violet, rose and other, more common varieties of perfume are by no means cheap, because of the fact that 80 many flowers are used in preparing the essential oil or the essence in solid form. The process by which the patals age robbed of their sweetness are three. Two of t! pr e the essential oil and the third produces the solid. In the first, a broad glass 1s used. Tt with pure grease and hly gath- ered petals. As they wilt in the sum, they are replaced by others until the grease has absorbed all the fragrance it will hold. This grease will hold the scent almost indefinitely, and when as much as poss been removed from it, it is still so fragrant that it brings a bigh price. It is used In the manufacture of the most expensive scented tollet soaps. According to the second process the petals are infused in oil, a long and tedious procedure. The third method employs ether, In which the petals are infused until all their fragrance has left them. This ether is then distilled and the soltd pro- duct which is left is worth consider- ably more than its' weight In goid. It commonly sells for about $200 an ounce, and it is worth all it cests, for it is by far the best of three processes. Cheap perfumes are not derived from the living flowers, but are compounded of chemicals upposed to be identical wit als found in the flowers. The formula for any given perfume is found by analvzing the solid product of thc other process. Yet the resulting perfume is not the same. Just Where the difference lies no one can determine. Nature has a way of guard- ing her secrets,