Summer Fashions

(Don't Cry — The Sky Is Closed — Paris Supper — Melancholy — Don't Kiss Me)

For weeks past, spring fashions were our all-absorbing occupation and our one topic of talk with the ladies. We had scarcely finished enumerating their lines and colors for them and praising their virtues when summer came upon us, calling us to new lines and new colors; so we brushed our hands of the former to turn to the latter with the same eagerness as at first, and more... And what is fashion but a perpetual leaning toward renewal and invention?

As for this summer dress, its first virtues are grace, freedom, and abandon, so that the frock is a color — fresh, transparent, with the sun's rays breaking and melting upon its shimmer. Among its particulars: if the frock is for daytime, it is adorned with a charming turned-back collar that ends upon the skirt in buttons, or cords of embroidery pour down from its collar, reaching the hips and then vanishing among the folds of the skirt. If the frock is for late afternoon, it is well that its collar be like a shirt collar and that the waist and skirt be finely, softly pleated. And if it is for the evening, its first condition is that it bare the shoulders, dispensing with the bretelles; it may be completed by a bodice of black velvet and then a billowing skirt of white tulle.

And there are frocks that have begun to step toward the coming autumn. They are most often of two pieces of colored wool, the loveliest being pink striped with green and white.

For excursions and the weekend there are light, graceful frocks which change, wholly or in part, with the change of time, place, and climate, and are worn all at once — in the automobile, on the shore, and in the mountains — needing no passport from one place to another; they are like a problem in arithmetic, in which the pieces of the frock are added together or subtracted as the lady wishes and wherever she wishes. My example of this is the fresco suit, whose jacket one removes to find beneath it a fine buttoned blouse. Or the suit of checked colors, which dispenses with the cape. Or the suit that replaces its jacket with a slit scarf thrown straight over the blouse at noon and at the tea hours.

With Jacques Heim, cotton fabrics pass from the kitchen to the casino, and behold, they roam the city and countryside alike, then take first place on the beach. Their colors and the fineness of their weave have contributed to their swift vogue. Another reason for their vogue is that Heim, besides the beauties he bestows upon his frocks, gives them, each season, lovely names by which they are known. This time he has borrowed for them the names of famous songs that have traveled far and wide. The full frock he has named "Don't Cry": it is of black cotton, its neckline deeply open and square, and on its skirt a game of dominoes. The narrow frock he has named "The Sky Is Closed": it is of chestnut cotton, its collar like a monk's collar ringed with white, its waist supple, its belt glossy, and it has two large pockets standing out.

The suit he has named "Moorings": it is of gray cotton, its sleeves three-quarter, its bodice striped, its belt black and glossy.

The jacket he has named "Sewn with White Thread": it resembles a man's jacket, but its stripes are vertical, its colors many, and its buttons black.

As for the late-afternoon frock — the casino frock — it is of four pieces, and its name is "A Hymn to Love." Made of white cotton adorned with minaret blossoms, it is completed by an embroidered cape covering the bodice, and through its skirt shows a small maillot made ready for a midnight bathe, so that the lady may easily, at that nocturnal hour, cast off the cape and the skirt and plunge into the water.

The evening gown has another name: "Lovers of Paris." It is of white cotton with black flowers. It has a belt of green taffeta, and for its bare shoulders a short coat of black velvet to be thrown over them, shielding them from the chill of the night.

Nor has the maillot been denied a name of its own, a colored cotton, and details all its own. There is one of two pieces of different colors: "Tom-Tom," red and white. There is the black one, named "Melancholy." And the blue, named "Horizons."

As for the hats — all made either of sponge, of cork, or of cotton — some are as large as a phonograph record, some as tiny as seashells, and some are in the spirit of "Don't Kiss Me"...