In 1863, the Fashion journals were loud in praise of the “Lydia” paletot, the “Lalla Rookh” jacket, and the “Vespertina” opera cloak. “Senorita” jackets, in velvet, silk, light shades of cashmere, and cloth, were in great favour. The ready reception nowadays given to new fashions without waiting, as formerly, for certain seasons is easily explained. In 1863 a cry was heard, “Longchamps is no more!” and it is true that Longchamps has ceased to exist. The traditional drive has lost its importance. Only a few tailors and dressmakers, seated in hired carriages, parade their new designs in the broad avenue of the Champs Elysées; poor lay figures, wanting in any kind of ease or elegance. The days are gone when fashionable Paris used to display the newly invented modes on the road leading from the Abbey of Longchamps to the Tuileries; when the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in Holy Week were red-letter days in the annals of extravagance and splendour. At the present time, the Bois de Boulogne is a constant scene of fashionable rivalry, and is equally crowded in winter and summer, spring and autumn. Daily drives have thus taken the place of the annual solemnities of Longchamps. The garments that are most noticeable set the fashion, which is greatly determined by the rank of the wearer. True, Longchamps is dead; but it has been resuscitated in a brilliant and permanent form among the leafy avenues of the Bois de Boulogne. For visiting dress, in 1863, Frenchwomen gave the preference to white bodices of some thin material; a pink skirt, striped with a darker shade of the same colour; a straw bonnet, trimmed with black ribbon and a few wild flowers; a knot of lace at the throat, and some black lace round the wrists. The most striking of the slight innovations of 1864 were the Russian or “Garibaldi” bodices of foulard, or of white, red, blue, or Havana silk, either braided or embroidered in Russian stitch; and the Louis XV. coats and waistcoats, of an English cloth of black and grey mixture. The waistcoats, when not of the same material, were of velvet, smooth cloth, or “gros-grain” silk. The Russian bodices, however, and the coat-waistcoats, were considered too much in “undress” style, and were soon succeeded by further novelties. Ladies who still wore them, provided themselves with silken “aumonières,” or bags embroidered in jet and suspended by bows of ribbon and lace; and with the Empress or hygienic belt, a small corset made of elastic material, which, when warm, adapted itself to every movement of the body. It was, in fact, the “stays” perfected. The quantity of toilet articles manufactured in a single year is really remarkable.