Color in Woman's Costume

Color is the hall-mark of our day, and woman decoratively costumed, and as decorator, will be largely responsible for recording this age as one of distinct importance--a transition period in decoration.

Color is the most marked expression of the spirit of the times; color in woman's clothes; color in house furnishing; color on the stage and in its setting; color in prose and verse.

Speaking of color in verse, Rudyard Kipling says:

"Several songs written by Tommy and the Poilu at the front, celebrate the glories of camp life in such vivid colors they could not be reproduced in cold, black, leaden type."

It is no mere chance, this use of vivid color. Man's psychology today craves it. A revolution is on. Did not the strong red, green, and blue of Napoleon's time follow the delicate sky-blues, rose and sunset-yellows of the Louis?

Color pulses on every side, strong, clean, clear rainbow color, as if our magicians of brush and dye-pot held a prism to the sun beam; violet, orange and green, magentas and strong blue against backgrounds of black and cold gray.

We had come to think of color as vice and had grown so conservative in its use, that it had all but disappeared from our persons, our homes, our gardens, our music and our literature. More than this, from our point of view! The reaction was bound to come by reason of eternal precedents.

Half-tones, antique effects, and general monotony, the material expression of complacent minds, has been cast aside, and the blase man of ten years ago is as keen as any child with his first linen picture book, and for the same reason.

Color, as we see it to-day, came out of the East via Persia. Bakst in Russia translated it into terms of art, and made the Ballet Russe an amazing, enthralling vision! Then Poiret, wizard among French couturier's, assisted by Bakst, adapted this Oriental color and line to woman's uses in private life. This supplemented the good work of le Gazette du Bon Ton_ of Paris, that effete fashion sheet, devoted to the decoration of woman, whose staff included many of the most gifted French artists, masters of brush and pen. Always irregular, no issue of the Bon Ton has appeared of late. It is held up by the war. The men who made it so fascinating a guide to woman "who would be decorative," are at the front, painting scenery for the battlefield--literally that: making mock trees and rocks, grass and hedges and earth, to mislead the fire of the enemy, and doubtless the kindred Munich art has been diverted into similar channels.

This Oriental color has made its way across Europe like some gorgeous bird of the tropics, and since the war has checked the output of Europe's factories, another channel has supplied the same wonderful colors in silks and gauze. They come to us by way of the Pacific, from China and from Japan. There is no escaping the color spell. Writers from the front tell us that it is as if the gods made sport with fate's anvil, for even the blackened dome of the war zone is lurid by night, with sparks of purple, red, green, yellow and blue; the flare of the world-destroying projectiles.