Woman as Decoration Part 4

If you have the good sense to go to one who deservedly ranks as an authority on line and colour in woman's costume, have also the wisdom to get from this man or woman not merely your raiment; go farther, and grasp as far as you are able the principles underlying his or her creations. Common sense tells one that there must be principles which underlie the planning of every hat and gown,--serious reasons why certain lines, colours and details are employed.

Principles have evolved and clarified themselves in the long journey which textiles, colours and lines have made, travelling down through the ages. A great cathedral, a beautiful house, a perfect piece of furniture, a portrait by a master, sculpture which is an object of art, a costume proclaimed as a success; all are the results of knowing and following laws. The clever woman of slender means may rival her friends with munition incomes, if only she will go to an expert with open mind, and through the thoughtful purchase of a completed costume,--hat, gown and all accessories,--learn an artist-modiste's point of view. Then, and we would put it in italics; _take seriously, with conviction, all his or her instructions as to the way to wear your clothes_. Anyone can _buy_ costumes, many can, perhaps own far more than you, but it is quite possible that no one can more surely be a picture--a delightfully decorative object on every occasion, than you, who knows instinctively (or has been taught), beyond all shadow of doubt, how to put on and then how to sit or walk in, your one tailored suit, your one tea gown, your one sport suit or ball gown.

PLATE X

An ideal example of the typical costume of fashionable England in the eighteenth century, when picturesqueness, not appropriateness, was the demand of the times.

This picture is known as THE MORNING PROMENADE: SQUIRE HALLET WITH HIS LADY. Painted by Thomas Gainsborough and now in the private collection of Lord Rothschild, London.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Courtesy of Braun & Co., New York, London & Paris_ _Eighteenth Century England Portrait by Thomas Gainsborough_]

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 coloured 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, lineless hats, and footwear wrong in colour 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 colour 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 colours, 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 colour of the dress.

Because so distorting to line, figured silks and coloured 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 colours used in gowns be but few, getting the desired variety by varying shades of a colour, and then using slippers a trifle higher in shade than the general colour selected.

CHAPTER VIII

JEWELRY AS DECORATION

The use of jewelry as colour and line has really nothing to do with its intrinsic worth. Just as when furnishing a house, one selects pictures for certain rooms with regard to their decorative quality alone, their colour with relation to the colour scheme of the room (The Art of Interior Decoration), so jewels should be selected either to complete costumes, or to give the keynote upon which a costume is built. A woman whose artist-dressmaker turns out for her a marvellous green gown, would far better carry out the colour scheme with some semi-precious stones than insist upon wearing her priceless rubies.

On the other hand, granted one owns rubies and they are becoming, then plan a gown entirely with reference to them, noting not merely the shade of their colour, but the character of their setting, should it be distinctive.

One of the most picturesque public events in Vienna each year, is a bazaar held for the benefit of a charity under court patronage. To draw the crowds and induce them to give up their money, it has always been the custom to advertise widely that the ladies of the Austro-Hungarian court would conduct the sale of articles at the various booths and that the said n.o.ble ladies would wear their family jewels. Also, that there be no danger of confusing the various celebrities, the names of those selling at each booth would be posted in plain lettering over it.

Programmes are sold, which also inform patrons as to the name and station of each lovely vendor of flowers and sweets. It is an extraordinary occasion, and well worth witnessing once. The jewels worn are as amazing and fascinating as is Hungarian music. There is a barbaric sumptuousness about them, an elemental quality conveyed by the Oriental combining of stones, which to the western European and American, seem incongruous. Enormous pearls, regular and irregular, are set together in company with huge sapphires, emeralds, rubies and diamonds, cut in the antique way. Looking about, one feels in an Arabian Nights' dream. On the particular occasion to which we refer, the most beautiful woman present was the Princess Metternich, and in her jewels decorative as any woman ever seen.

The women of the Austrian court, especially the Hungarian women, are notably beautiful and fascinating as well. It is the Magyar elan, that abandon which prompts a woman to toss her jewelled bangle to a Gypsy leader of the orchestra, when his violin moans and flashes out a czardas.

But the rule remains the same whether your jewels are inherited and rich in souvenirs of European courts, or the last work of Cartier. They must be a harmonious part of a carefully designed costume, or used with discretion against a background of costumes planned with reference to making them count as the sole decoration.

We recall a Spanish beauty, representative of several n.o.ble strains, who was an artist in the combining of her gems as to their cla.s.s and colour.

Hers was that rare gift,--infallible good taste, which led her to contribute an individual quality to her temporary possessions. She counted in Madrid, not only as a beautiful and brilliant woman, but as a decorative contribution to any room she entered. It was not uncommon to meet her at dinner, wearing some very chic blue gown, often of velvet, the sole decoration of which would be her sapphires, stones rare in themselves, famous for their colour, their matching, the manner in which they were cut, and their setting,--the unique hand-work of some goldsmith of genius. It is impossible to forget her distinguished appearance as she entered the room in a princess gown, made to show the outline of her faultless figure, and cut very low. Against the background of her white neck and the simple lines of her blue gown, the sapphires became decoration with artistic restraint, though they gleamed from a coronet in her soft, black hair, encircled her neck many times and fell below her waist line, clasped her arms and were suspended from her ears in long, graceful pendants. They adorned her fingers and they composed a girdle of indescribable beauty.

PLATE XI

MARIE ANTOINETTE IN A PORTRAIT BY MADAME VIGeE LE BRUN, one of the greatest portrait painters of the eighteenth century. Here we see the lovely queen of Louis XVI in the type of costume she made her own which is still referred to as the Marie Antoinette style.

This portrait is in the Musee National, Versailles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Courtesy of Braun & Co., New York, London & Paris_ _Bourbon France Marie Antoinette Portrait by Madame Vigee Le Brun_]

Later, the same night, one would meet this woman at a ball, and discover that she had made a complete change of costume and was as elegant as before, but now all in red, a gown of deep red velvet or some wonderful soft satin, unadorned save by her rubies, as numerous and as unique as her sapphires had been.

There were other women in Madrid wearing wonderful jewels, one of them when going to court functions always had a carriage follow hers, in which were detectives. How strange this seems to Americans! But this particular woman in no way ill.u.s.trated the point we would make, for she had lost control of her own lines, had no knowledge of line and colour in costume, and when wearing her jewels, looked very much like the show case of a jeweller's shop.

Jewelry must be worn to make lines, continue or terminate lines, accentuate a good physical point, or hide a bad one. Remember that a jewel like any other _object d'art_, is an ornament, and unless it is ornamental, and an added attraction to the wearer, it is valueless in a decorative way. For this reason it is well to discover, by experimenting, what jewelry is your affair, what kind of rings for example, are best suited to your kind of hands. It may be that small rings of delicate workmanship, set with colourless gems, will suit your hands; while your friend will look better in the larger, heavier sort, set with stones of deeper tones.

This finding out what one can and cannot wear, from shoe leather to a feather in the hat (and the inventory includes even width of hem on a linen handkerchief), is by no means a frivolous, fruitless waste of time; it is a wise preparedness, which in the end saves time, vitality and money. And if it does not make one independent of expert advice (and why should one expect to be that, since technique in any art should improve with practice?) it certainly prepares one to grasp and make use of, expert suggestions.

We have often been told, and by those whose business it is to know such things, that the models created by great Paris dressmakers are not always flashes of genius which come in the night, nor the wilful perversion of an existing fashion, to force the world of women into discarding, and buying everything new. It may look suspiciously like it when we see a mere swing of the pendulum carrying the straight sheath out to the ten-yard limit of crinoline skirts.

As a matter of fact, decorative woman rules the fashions, and if decorative woman makes up her mind to retain a line or a limit, she does it. The open secret is that every great Paris house has its chic clientele, which in returning from the Riviera--Europe's Peac.o.c.k Alley--is full of knowledge as to how the last fashions (line and colour), succeeded in scoring in the role designated. Those points found to be desirable, becoming, beautiful, comfortable, appropriate, _seduisant_--what you will--are taken as the foundation of the next wardrobe order, and with this inside information from women who _know_ (know the subtle distinction between daring lines and colours, which are _good form_, and those which are not), the men or women who give their lives to creating costumes proceed to build. These are the fashions for the exclusive few this year, for the whole world the next year.

In conclusion, to reduce one of the rules as to how jewels should be worn to its simplest form, never use imitation pearl tr.i.m.m.i.n.g if you are wearing a necklace and other ornaments of real pearls. The pearl tr.i.m.m.i.n.g may be very charming in itself, but it lessens the distinction of your real pearls.

In the same way rhinestones may be decidedly decorative, but only a woman with an artist's instinct can use her diamonds at the same time.

It can be done, by keeping the rhinestones off the bodice. An artist can conceive and work out a perfect adjustment of what in the mind and hand of the inexperienced is not to be attempted. Your French dressmaker combines real and imitation laces in a fascinating manner. That same artist's instinct could trim a gown with emerald pastes and hang real gems of the same in the ears, using brooch and chain, but you would find the green gla.s.s garniture swept from the proximity of the gems and used in some telling manner to score as _tr.i.m.m.i.n.g_,--not to compete as jewels. We have seen the skirt of French gowns of black tulle or net, caught up with great rhinestone swans, and at the same time a diamond chain and diamond earrings worn. Nothing could have been more chic.

We recall another case of the discreet combining of gems and paste. It was at the Spring races, Longchamps, Paris. The decorative woman we have never forgotten, had marvellous gold-red hair, wore a costume of golden brown chiffon, a close toque (to show her hair) of brown; long topaz drops hung from her ears, set in hand-wrought Etruscan gold, and her sh.e.l.l lorgnettes hung from a topaz chain. Now note that on her toque and her girdle were buckles made of topaz gla.s.s, obviously not real topaz and because made to look like milliner's garniture and not jeweler's work, they had great style and were as beautiful of their kind as the real stones.

PLATE XII

The portrait of an Englishwoman painted during the Napoleonic period.

She wears the typical Empire gown, cloak, and bonnet.

The original of this portrait is the same referred to elsewhere as having moistened her muslin gowns to make them cling to her, in Grecian folds.

Among her admiring friends was Lord Byron.

A descendant who allows the use of the charming portrait, explains that the fair lady insisted upon being painted in her bonnet because her curling locks were short--a result of typhoid fever.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Costume of Empire Period An English Portrait_]