Shop Talk

In the days of vapors and migraines, whalebones and chaises lounges, a woman’s work was to be a rare and fragile flower. But to be a wistful Camille when you’re dashing through traffic or to be glamorous in the eyes of the man by whose side you’ve crouched in a duck blind since the first cold streaks of dawn appeared in the sky, is something else again. The awful fact is that the eternal mystery of woman is endangered by big business, soap-box campaigning and the “pal” code. Quickly, before it is too late and Marlene’s trousers have made Amazons of us all, let’s give a thought to the nineties and to allure. Perfume is the way back to subtler feminine supremacy. The scent of roses, for instance, will help to conjure up memories of an old garden and a girl to whom a boy would like to send America Beauties. At Bloomingdale’s this week, in the toiletries department, you may revel in hundreds of roses massed throughout this section. It is Rose Week and rose perfume, sachet, toilet water and all your toilet requisites are there, softly and fragrantly scented to satisfy your yen to smell simply grand and different.

One of our secret gardens in this hurrying town is a little salon where young things scurry when their skins are coarsened by enlarged pores or eruptions and their wise, gallant-faced elders who have weathered the years take time out to battle sagging muscles, impoverished tissues and fading beauty Miss Ann Ollendorf at the St. Moritz, the gentle, trained beautician whose salon it is, works wonders with your skin and you???ll come out with your face and spirit renewed, refreshed and refortified, Her method is entirely new and she takes great care and pride in her work. If you have lost any of your loveliness visit her and get it back. You need it to live your life and live it fully!

Critics of modern life love to accuse us of lack of elegance grace, and of that rarer quality, graciousness. They point with pride to the past and with pain to the present, leaving us to defend ourselves as best we may. The cocktail hour, in our opinion, is a point in our favor. It is smart, graceful and gracious. It offers a colorful and amusing interlude in what might otherwise be a dull and ordinary routine. Yesterday we stopped in to see Carol Stupell at her cocktail stop, 443 Madison avenue, to find out how the sweeping trend of the cocktail hour is effecting her. In a maze of subtle lighting, glittering glassware and shining loveliness we found her, busying herself with her newest and most ingenious pet, an individual oyster or clam plate with separate compartments for each and space for cocktail sauce. We had and how???d and then turned to the glassware to realize that this was no ordinary display and one would hardly use these to quench an ordinary thirst or to drown a trivial sorrow. Swedish, Belgian, Val St. Lambert and Holland glassware make up her collection and most of it leaves the store handsomely monogrammed. We could go on and on for hours but we’ll finish up by telling you that if you are seeking things modern…bars…drinking accessories…table decorations or the like…go directly to her.