To dress well requires something more than a full purse and a pretty
figure. It needs taste, good sense, and refinement. Dress may almost
be classed as one of the fine arts. It is certainly one of those arts,
the cultivation of which is indispensable to any person moving in
the upper or middle classes of society. Very clever women are too
frequently indifferent to the graces of the toilette; and women who
wish to be thought clever affect indifference. In the one case it
is an error, and in the other a folly. It is not enough that a
gentlewoman should be clever, or well-educated, or well-born. To take
her due place in society, she must be acquainted with all that this
little book proposes to teach. She must, above all else, know how to
enter a room, how to perform a graceful salutation, and how to dress.
Of these three important qualifications, the most important, because
the most observed, is the latter.
Let your style of dress always be appropriate to the hour of the day.
To dress too finely in the morning, or to be seen in a morning dress
in the evening, is equally vulgar and out of place.
Light and inexpensive materials are fittest for morning wear; dark
silk dresses for the promenade or carriage; and low dresses of rich or
transparent stuffs for the dinner and ball. A young lady cannot dress
with too much simplicity in the early part of the day. A morning dress
of some simple material, and delicate whole colour, with collar and
cuffs of spotless linen, is, perhaps, the most becoming and elegant of
morning toilettes.
Never dress very richly or showily in the street. It attracts
attention of no enviable kind, and is looked upon as a want of
good breeding. In the carriage a lady may dress as elegantly as she
pleases. With respect to ball-room toilette, its fashions are so
variable, that statements which are true of it to-day, may be false
a month hence. Respecting no institution of modern society is it so
difficult to pronounce half-a-dozen permanent rules.
We may, perhaps, be permitted to suggest the following leading
principles; but we do so with diffidence. Rich colours harmonize with
rich brunette complexions and dark hair. Delicate colours are the most
suitable for delicate and fragile styles of beauty. Very young ladies
are never so suitably attired as in white. Ladies who dance should
wear dresses of light and diaphanous materials, such as _tulle_,
gauze, crape, net, &c., over coloured silk slips. Silk dresses are not
suitable for dancing. A married lady who dances only a few quadrilles
may wear a _décolleté_ silk dress with propriety.
Very stout persons should never wear white. It has the effect of
adding to the bulk of the figure.
Black and scarlet, or black and violet, are worn in mourning.
A lady in deep mourning should not dance at all.
However fashionable it may be to wear very long dresses, those ladies
who go to a ball with the intention of dancing and enjoying the
dance, should cause their dresses to be made short enough to clear
the ground. We would ask them whether it is not better to accept this
slight deviation from an absurd fashion, than to appear for three
parts of the evening in a torn and pinned-up skirt?
Well-made shoes, whatever their colour or material, and faultless
gloves, are indispensable to the effect of a ball-room toilette.
Much jewellery is out of place in a ball-room. Beautiful flowers,
whether natural or artificial, are the loveliest ornaments that a lady
can wear on these occasions.
At small dinner parties, low dresses are not so indispensable as
they were held to be some years since. High dresses of transparent
materials, and low bodices with capes of black lace, are considered
sufficiently full dress on these occasions. At large dinners only the
fullest dress is appropriate.
Very young ladies should wear but little jewellery. Pearls are deemed
most appropriate for the young and unmarried.
Let your jewellery be always the best of its kind. Nothing is so
vulgar, either in youth or age, as the use of false ornaments.
There is as much propriety to be observed in the wearing of jewellery
as in the wearing of dresses. Diamonds, pearls, rubies, and all
transparent precious stones belong to evening dress, and should on no
account be worn before dinner. In the morning let your rings be of
the more simple and massive kind; wear no bracelets; and limit your
jewellery to a good brooch, gold chain, and watch. Your diamonds
and pearls would be as much out of place during the morning as a low
dress, or a wreath.
It is well to remember in the choice of jewellery that mere costliness
is not always the test of value; and that an exquisite work of art,
such as a fine cameo, or a natural rarity, such as a black pearl, is a
more _distingué_ possession than a large brilliant which any rich and
tasteless vulgarian can buy as easily as yourself. Of all precious
stones, the opal is one of the most lovely and least commonplace. No
vulgar woman purchases an opal. She invariably prefers the more showy
ruby, emerald, or sapphire.
A true gentlewoman is always faultlessly neat. No richness of toilette
in the afternoon, no diamonds in the evening, can atone for unbrushed
hair, a soiled collar, or untidy slippers at breakfast.
Never be seen in the street without gloves; and never let your gloves
be of any material that is not kid or calf. Worsted or cotton gloves
are unutterably vulgar. Your gloves should fit to the last degree of
perfection.
In these days of public baths and universal progress, we trust that
it is unnecessary to do more than hint at the necessity of the most
fastidious personal cleanliness. The hair, the teeth, the nails,
should be faultlessly kept; and a muslin dress that has been worn
once too often, a dingy pocket-handkerchief, or a soiled pair of light
gloves, are things to be scrupulously avoided by any young lady who is
ambitious of preserving the exterior of a gentlewoman.
Remember that the make of your _corsage_ is of even greater importance
than the make of your dress. No dressmaker can fit you well, or
make your bodices in the manner most becoming to your figure, if the
_corsage_ beneath be not of the best description.
Your boots and gloves should always be faultless.
Perfumes should be used only in the evening, and then in moderation.
Let your perfumes be of the most delicate and _recherché_ kind.
Nothing is more vulgar than a coarse ordinary scent; and of all
coarse, ordinary scents, the most objectionable are musk and
patchouli.
Finally, every lady should remember that to dress well is a duty
which she owes to society; but that to make it her idol is to commit
something worse than a folly. Fashion is made for woman; not woman for
fashion.
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