THE LAWS UNDERLYING ALL COSTUMING OF WOMAN

That every costume is either right or wrong is not a matter of general
knowledge. "It will do," or "It is near enough" are verdicts responsible
for beauty hidden and interest destroyed. Who has not witnessed the mad
mental confusion of women and men put to it to decide upon costumes for
some fancy-dress ball, and the appalling ignorance displayed when, at
the costumer's, they vaguely grope among battered-looking garments,
accepting those proffered, not really knowing how the costume they ask
for should look?

Absurd mistakes in period costumes are to be taken more or less
seriously according to temperament. But where is the fair woman who will
say that a failure to emerge from a dressmaker's hands in a successful
costume is not a tragedy? Yet we know that the average woman, more
often than not, stands stupefied before the infinite variety of
materials and colors of our twentieth century, and unless guided by an
expert, rarely presents the figure, _chez-elle_, or when on view in
public places, which she would or could, if in possession of the few
rules underlying all successful dressing, whatever the century or
circumstances.

Six salient points are to be borne in mind when planning a costume,
whether for a fancy-dress ball or to be worn as one goes about one's
daily life:

       *       *       *       *       *

First, appropriateness to occasion, station and age;

Second, character of background you are to appear against (your
setting);

Third, what outline you wish to present to observers (the period of
costume);

Fourth, what materials of those in use during period selected you will
choose;

Fifth, what colors of those characteristic of period you will use;

Sixth, the distinction between those details which are obvious
contributions to the costume, and those which are superfluous, because
meaningless or line-destroying.

       *       *       *       *       *

Let us remind our reader that the woman who dresses in perfect taste
often spends far less money than she who has contracted the habit of
indefiniteness as to what she wants, what she should want, and how to
wear what she gets.

Where one woman has used her mind and learned beyond all wavering what
she can and what she cannot wear, thousands fill the streets by day and
places of amusement by night, who blithely carry upon their persons
costumes which hide their good points and accentuate their bad ones.

The _rara avis_ among women is she who always presents a fashionable
outline, but so subtly adapted to her own type that the impression made
is one of distinct individuality.

One knows very well how little the average costume counts in a theatre,
opera house or ball-room. It is a question of background again. Also you
will observe that the costume which counts most individually, is the one
in a key higher or lower than the average, as with a voice in a crowded
room.

The chief contribution of our day to the art of making woman decorative
is the quality of appropriateness. I refer of course to the woman who
lives her life in the meshes of civilisation. We have defined the smart
woman as she who wears the costume best suited to each occasion when
that occasion presents itself. Accepting this definition, we must all
agree that beyond question the smartest women, as a nation, are English
women, who are so fundamentally convinced as to the invincible law of
appropriateness that from the cradle to the grave, with them evening
means an evening gown; country clothes are suited to country uses and a
tea-gown is not a bedroom negligee. Not even in Rome can they be
prevailed upon "to do as the Romans do."

Apropos of this we recall an experience in Scotland. A house party had
gathered for the shooting,--English men and women. Among the guests were
two Americans; done to a turn by Redfern. It really turned out to be a
tragedy, as they saw it, for though their cloth skirts were short, they
were silk-lined; outing shirts were of crepe--not flannel; tan boots,
but thinly soled; hats most chic, but the sort that drooped in a mist.
Well, those two American girls had to choose between long days alone,
while the rest tramped the moors, or to being togged out in borrowed
tweeds, flannel shirts and thick-soled boots.