Shop Talk

Going back to school? Here’s a code for college! There’s a special philosophy for college clothes. On the campus you dress informally, yes—but informally in a very particular pattern. Your coat is big, bulky tweed, but it’s not just any coat —it has loose balmaccan lines, and it’s collar is young in the Buster Brown tradition. Your shoes are ghillies or clod-hoppers and you have a drawerful of sweaters in bright colors that you mix together. You go around without a hat. You wear mittens and short woolen socks.

You have a simple, tailored dress which you plan in advance to wear in class but it may never see the inside of a classroom. You may save it instead for trips to town, because the sight of yourself in trim ribbed jersey will present such a refreshing contrast to your usual bundled appearance. You have a tweed suit and you are thankful because you wear it every time you go off on a weekend and the skirt is in constant use with sweaters. When you want to cut a figure you wear the jacket over a plain tweed skirt. For clothes like these you have a simple classic felt hat with a brim and a bright feather and a pair of yellow chamois gloves buttoned once at the wrist like a child’s glove, or yellow string gloves.

You find out early in your freshman year, that college teas, no matter how unimportant and “hen party” they may sound, are taken very seriously and are attended in the most elegant kind of clothes. Then there are the tea dances which brighten your Saturday afternoons, so you will need a dress. Make it one of the new treebark crepes with a metal-shot yoke of the same fabric and short sleeves, even if you are cold-blooded.

Since its beginning in 1902, The Alexander Company, has seen many changes in floor covering fabrics and designs, dyeing methods, etc., a number of which were introduced by members of their own staff, and are now in general use throughout the United States. The floor covering industry has moved rapidly forward in the past twenty-five years with striking changes occuring almost weekly. The Alexander Company has not only kept step with this progress at all times, but have been the first to make every worthy innovation appearing in its field, and passed them on immediately to its clients. They carry every type of floor covering from linoleums, broadloom carpeting, domestic rugs and carpets and domestic orientals to genuine orientals. Here, in their beautiful showrooms 7 West Thirty-sixth street, you can select from one of New York’s largest displays, quality merchandise at reasonable prices.

You probably know already that bright colors are the ones that flag the stag-line at a dance so you will have your evening dress in a bright crepe. But the wrap with it will be black velvet—to go with all your dresses. All of the stores have special college departments, so buy simply, wisely and well and you’ll really enjoy the new semester.

I had the fatuous idea that the Lightoiler salesroom at 11 East Thirty-sixth street was a small place. I was taken aback to find myself toddling through room after room full of lamps and fixtures, all of them separate according to price, style and period. You can find anything that you desire in the line of fixtures there from cathedral fixtures and palatial chandeliers to modern household fixtures, in a price range that includes every pocketbook.