Shop Talk

Every one who has been to the Salzburg Festivals or taken a Schloss near Munich, or spent a week in the original White Horse Tavern, has come home with some odd bit of Tyroleana —a jacket, a hat, leather pants, or horn buttons. But they never quite fitted. The jackets were too big around the shoulders, the pants a bit too skin-tight for Bar Harbor, the hats a little too eccentric for Park avenue. This year, the French dressmakers seized upon the Tyrolean idea and made it wearable. They have tailored the linen jacket to fit, tamed the eagle feathers, picked and chosen the chamois beards, given the felt hats a sophisticated twist, and finally mixed the Tyrolean uniform with Parisian mufti in a way that would make the yokels of Berchtesgaden, Oberammergau and Garmisch open their eyes and stare. They are exclusive with Best’s.

You Feel as though you’d been in a whirlwind after ten minutes in Nicole’s very French shop at 7 East Fifty-fifth street—breathless but entertained. Never a dull moment. In the first place, her hats are always gay. You will say; very nice for Kay Francis but I couldn’t get away with a thing like that. But Nicole has an infectious way added to a marvelous collection of imports. She will pop you into a black Talbot (she adores Talbot’s hats) with long curly coq feathers cascading into your shoulder and the transformation is begun. Agnes’s black and white monkey hat is more than a little mad but you’ll like it. Then there’s a Reboux black velvet with a swirl of, believe it or not, red, pink, and blue aigrettes on the top looking like the splutterings of a Roman candle. There are heaps more of them, all very cheering.

With clothes the way they are, I am girding up my loins. Especially as the smartest stylists I know come back from Paris saying, "Corsets are so necessary they have to be your first consideration. Start right out and buy a corset. If you can’t afford a dress after that, just wear what you have." I rushed right over to Jay-Thorpe at once. Mrs. Stoers who makes unbelievably fine ones, is just back from Paris where she designed a large line. They’re the most gorgeous materials, one satin brocaded with a pattern which is repeated in the lace panty ruffle. That’s my idea of supreme luxury. The all-in-ones give you a divine figure too. They are all expensive, but oh, so beautiful.

We have pestered every one on the subject of men using toilet water. There used to be a notion that it was effeminate. This was part of some frontier day conception of American manhood and we wanted to know how things stood now. We find that the idea is shriveling fast. In fact, toilet water has almost become the mark of the athlete, the mark of the great big dauntless man. Our spies have established that any number of our ranking golf and tennis players use it and that it is kept in lockers throughout our most tony clubs. And we find there are several rather pungent polo teams. One, whose Number Three dashes his head with Ambre between periods, fairly reeks.