On the eve of the Grand Prix, the climax of the Paris season, another Grand Prix, for feminine elegance, as held at the Portiques, the new luxury-trade centre in the Champs lysees, and, if the opinion of the smartly-clad audience be any ente ion, the day of the sweetly feminin charmingly helpless woman has Gawned again, Throughout the afternoon and evening, frocks created by the great worn by some of the best-known theatrical stars, uctte, Jane Renouardt and Jane Marnac, were subjected to critical examination, and those most early Victorian styles the greatest amount of applause, not only from the men but from the women, A black lace frock, with skirts to the ankles, worn with a quaint little boat-shaped hat perched on the side of the head and a tiny little black lace sunshade, only needing. a hoop beneath it to complete the Mlusion that it was a survival from the fifties, was rapturously received. Although the audience, who were the judges, should have voted not for theatrical and striking effects but for good taste and elegance, very few of the dresses exhibited could have been worn at the races or a ball by a woman of any position, They were very beautiful but most of them were decidedly theatrical. Two or three of the actresses were accompanied by their pet dogs, to create a pic~ turesque effect like that of certain portraits of the 18th and early 19th Century, and one of them, Manna Paiva, swept down the stairs and across the narrow stage followed by 'a magnificent borzoi.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.