The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-07-19
DRESS AND SUGGESTIONS ANNE p.iHn,uor.n FOR WOMEN

Silk coats and straw hats make up
 midsummer combination that re-
 suits in attractive costumes and strikes new note
 New York, July 1S.-It is astonishing what an immense amount of fashionable and attractive dressing is done in New York this midsummer. It is boon to the reporters of clothes, it is blessing to the dressmakers, and it keeps alive social background which is usually dull and dead in cities in July.
 It is really not necessary to search | for clothes in Paris during the month of August, if this active promotion of in teresting frocks continues in the way { that it is now going.
 SOCIAL LIFE IN TOWN There are thousand and one reasons for the foregathering of women in large cities this summer, but these reasons 1 are multiplied in New York. woman who was lunching in the Japanese tea garden at the Ritz on a hot Monday, said that she had found that all the people who had great estates on Long Island spent their days in New York. Her state ment has every evidence of truth. It | is difficult to get table at any of the smart restaurants during weekdays. One has to order it at 10 o'clock in the morn ! ing, and even then, the answer IS Just as likely to be that the books are closed as that there is one table left. 1 It is the same thing at the theatres. It is very difficult to get good seats as l far as three days in advance. Even l the Saturday matinees, when everyone | Is supposed to be in the country or at | the seashore, are practically sold out | by Saturday morning.
 | The roof gardens are crowded every day for dinner and supper. At such places as the Palais Royal with its sensational revue at Il 30 and its private boxes for supper guests, the velvet ropes | are stretched across the door by 1l:l5, and the crowd outside looks in as small 1 children gaze in show window at l Christmas toys.
 This constant grouping of people from all over the United States, in addition 1 to the social activities in town of all the smart New York set that keeps in l touch with the city about kaleidoscope array of fashionable clothes.
 The atmosphere reminds one of Paris in June. Usually, New York is given over to a tourist crowd in summer and 1 the fashionable women who feel com- pelled to come in from Long Island or i down from nearby resorts, dress as tourists dress, in exceedingly plain clothes But they are not doing that l tEis summer They're fluffing about l in all sorts of finery. Straw hats that were once kept for the garden are now worn to a smart restaurant luncheon, half low evening gowns are worn to dim ner on the roof; silk coats are used be- cause of the tendency to wear muslin and batiste instead of foulard and chif- fon
 The straw hats and their trimmings ! would in themselves make a chapter of ] midsummer fashions. And then, there
 are the new silk hats which are tied under the chin and heaped with wonder
 ful flowers
 THE LOOSE SILK COAT
 The sketch shows costume that was | worn for lunch in the Japanese gardens,
 where the women feed pigeons, throw
 crumbs at the goldfish in the rushing
 stream that flows by their feet, and eat
 at lacouered tables on pebbly islands. The gown itself is of very pale vel l tow batiste with a wrapped bodice cui partly low in front. The collar is of heljotrope silk, with short sleeves edged with chinchila This coat drops away from the neck with Japanese collar has two streamers in front by which 1t is fastened, and is held in at the hem which Is at the knees, by turnover cuff | of the silk.
 The high hat is of gray silk trimmed