Typical Costume of Fashionable England in the Eighteenth Century

If you want to wear light spats, stop and think whether your heavy ankles will not look more trim in boots with light, glove-fitting tops and black vamps.

We have seen women with such slender ankles and shapely insteps, that white slippers or low shoes might be worn with black or colored stockings. But it is playing safe to have your stockings match your slippers or shoes.

Buckles and bows on slippers and pumps can destroy the line of a shoe and hence a foot, or continue and accentuate line. There are fashions in buckles and bows, but unless you bend the fashion until it allows nature's work to appear at its best, it will destroy artistic intention.

Some people buy footwear as they buy fruit; they like what they see, so they get it! You know so many women, young and old, who do this, that our advice is, try to recall those who do not. Yes, now you see what we aim at; the women you have in mind always continue the line of their gowns with their feet. You can see with your mind's eye how the slender black satin slippers, -one of which always protrudes from the black evening gown, carry to its eloquent finish the line from her head through torso, hip to knee, and knee down through instep to toe. A line so frequently obstructed by senseless trimmings, line-less hats, and footwear wrong in color and line.

If your gown is white and your object to create line, can you see how you defeat your purpose by wearing anything but white slippers or shoes?

At a recent dinner one of the young women who had sufficient good taste to wear an exquisite gown of silk and silver gauze, showing a pale magenta ground with silver roses. Continued the color scheme of her designer with silver slippers, tapering as Cinderella's, but spoiled the picture she might have made by breaking her line and enlarging her ankles and instep with magenta stockings. This could have been avoided by the use of silver stockings or magenta slippers with magenta stockings.

When brocades, in several colors, are chosen for slippers, keep in mind that the ground of the silk must absolutely match your costume. It is not enough that in the figure of brocade is the color of the dress. Because so distorting to line, figured silks and colored brocades for footwear are seldom a wise choice.

To those who cannot own a match in slippers for each gown, we would suggest that the number of colors used in gowns be but few, getting the desired variety by varying shades of a color, and then using slippers a trifle higher in shade than the general color selected.