Shop Talk

Shades of Captain Kidd! a sure-enough pirate ship now flies the first Jolly Roger displayed in New York waters in over two-hundred years, and it lies berthed along the New York City Recreation Pier, 129th street and the Hudson. The lean, two masted schooner is the floating home of Captain Tom, central figure of the new radio program for children, “Captain Tom and the Pirate Ship,” sponsored by Coward Shoes over WOR every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:15. The buccaneer craft comes by its pirate jack as honestly as a pirate ship can. For it is the good ship Eugie, seventy-two years old, and a one time Civil War privateer that preyed on Northern commerce for the Confederacy. Captain Tom points out that his craft is a reformed pirate, however, for it now serves a peace-time purpose as a marine museum. Aboard the ship are more than 3,000 deep-sea curios, including “Old Betsy,” the favorite cannon of Blackbeard the Pirate, and a whale-shark, a forty-five-foot fish, the largest ever caught. All boy and girl listeners-in to his program, along with their fathers and mothers, are invited by Captain Tom to come aboard ship and visit him any day between 10 A. M. and 10 P. M. There is no charge for admission and each little girl and boy visitor is made “Shipmate” to the Pirate ship crew.

Arnold Constable has a collection of dresses that will make you turn your purse inside out and throw your budget out of the window. All their clothes have snap, from the simplest little Park avenue-ish suit, to a lovely lace evening costume for Mother-of-the-Bride occasions. They’re very new and have dashing collars and scarfs and jackets, besides being beautifully made. There are a lot of tweedy wool costumes of the severely classic sports type, but the triumph there is the collection of late-afternoon, dinner and evening gowns. Nothing is over-expensive so trot right over there and pick yourself an outfit as we stand wistfully by and wish we could too.

It Doesn’t do to look dreary, even if your heart is breaking. If you can buy something new— or even if you can’t—stop in and see Miriam Haskell in the Heckscher building. She has a shop full of fascinating novelty jewelry that is guaranteed to make a new woman of you. It is the most unusual collection of smart costume jewelry going and it is being sold there at next to nothing. There are all sorts of composition stones with clips and bracelets to match. For sports wear you will lose your mind over the deep-brown cord bracelet which buttons closed, like a cuff, over four or five huge yellow bead buttons. There are braided necklaces and modern versions of the dog collar and wonderful concoctions which get right away from the conventional string of beads you’re all so sick of. It’s impossible to stay in that deep funk when you’re surrounded by so much imagination—at least it proved impossible for us.

Hattie Carnegie still has that men’s department, that hard-boiled little corner, all mirrored, with a two-fisted young man in charge of ties, bathrobes, cigarette-cases, pajamas and all the rest of the haberdashery that women give to men. Schiaparelli does the buying for it in England. There are no men mannequins— not even the wax gentlemen that Lanvin uses in her men’s department in Paris. Lots of women buy scarfs and ties there for themselves too. And why not? Styles have almost reached the point where you slap your uncle on the shoulder and it turns out to be your aunt.

The ancient Hebrews, like the Greeks and other people of antiquity, made use of the letters of the alphabet for figures.