Shop Talk

Beauty primers for Summer, 1934, demand expert care of your face; it has to be clean to be beautiful—never forget that. It’s the foundation of everything. You can get good cleaners adapted to every type of skin. The soundest thing to use is the stuff that seems to get into your own pores most thoroughly and get the dirt out best.

Do something every night about keeping your skin soft—no matter what age you are. You don’t have to go creamy to bed, if you don’t want to. After some of the cream has been absorbed, rub the rest off.

There is every kind of softener, even one for oily skins. Every so often, give your face a whirl. There are circulation creams and rejuvenating masks that bring back the glow of youth in a way you wouldn’t believe! Like all adjuncts of the skin game, these vary in application and accomplishment. Stimulating lotions help in this, too.

Always give your face a finish (lotion or cream) before you put on powder. Your own skin tone in powder looks more natural, but sometimes another, brighter tone looks more flattering. Put your powder on before cake rouge, after cream or liquid rouge. Use a nice down puff and put the powder on gently in small amounts, the way they do in the beauty salons.

Are you watching your weight? Check up on it every day. Don’t let the pounds creep up on you unawares—it’s when they are firmly established that they are so hard to get rid of. The new school of thought is to “reduce in spots.” If you are going in for reducing be sure you are doing the right thing to curtail your particular erring areas. There is an amazing soap on the market that makes reducing at home possible. You have to be energetic about it, massage it in where it is intended to take off the pounds, and in a few short weeks it works wonders. Don’t go in for trick dieting. If you need to cut down, keep your food well balanced, but eat smaller amounts of everything. Write me for the name of the soap and where it can be purchased.

The sanctimonious will probably object, but the rest of you will applaud—for the split skirt is here again. Slit, split, slash—scissors have been zipping reckless through the skirts of the mid-season collections. Both evening and day hems have come under the shears. Incisions in front, in back, on both sides. Incisions from a few inches to a foot in depth—laying open a substantial expanse of ankle and shin-bone. Another inch further—and a knee would be out in public.

A few dressmakers, scissors in hand, began timidly snipping hems last February. Now, you can scarcely find one who doesn’t. Straight up in front, the entire length of the tibia, Lanvin splits her lovely crepe dresses. Augusta Bernard cuts slits fore and aft on blue bagheera crepe. Patou’s sheer black crepes edged with pleated ruffling, is laid open a good twelve inches. Vionnet’s long white evening dresses are split nearly knee-deep. And in case you balk at brazen leg-showing, Worth provides split skirts, whereunder lacy underskirts screen your limbs. Bergdorf Goodman has a breathtaking collection of these original imports, so stop in and get accustomed to the new modes.