COLOUR IN WOMAN'S COSTUME
Colour 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.
Colour is the most marked expression of the spirit of the times; colour
in woman's clothes; colour in house furnishing; colour on the stage and
in its setting; colour in prose and verse.
Speaking of colour in verse, Rudyard Kipling says (we quote from an
editorial in the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_, Jan. 7, 1917):
"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 colour. Man's psychology to-day
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?
Colour pulses on every side, strong, clean, clear rainbow colour, 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 grey.
We had come to think of colour 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
precedent.
Half-tones, antique effects, and general monotony,--the material
expression of complacent minds, has been cast aside, and the blasé man
of ten years ago is as keen as any child with his first linen picture
book,--and for the same reason.
Colour, 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
couturières, assisted by Bakst, adapted this Oriental colour 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 colour 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
colours in silks and gauze. They come to us by way of the Pacific, from
China and from Japan. There is no escaping the colour 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.
PLATE IX
A Velasquez portrait of the Renaissance, when the human
form counted only as a rack on which was heaped crinoline
and stiff brocades and chains and gems and wigs and every
manner of elaborate adornment, making mountains of poor
tottering human forms, all but lost beneath.
[Illustration: _Vienna Hofmuseum_
_Spain-Velasquez Portrait_]
The present costuming of woman, when she treats herself as decoration,
owes much to the prophets of the "new" theatre and their colour scale.
These men have demonstrated, in an unforgettable manner, the value of
colour; the dependence of every decorative object upon background; shown
how fraught with meaning can be an uncompromising outline, and the
suggestiveness of really significant detail.
Bakst, Rheinhardt and Granville Barker have taught us the new colour
vocabulary. Gordon Craig was perhaps the first to show us the stage made
suggestive by insisting on the importance of clever lighting to produce
atmosphere and elimination of unessential objects, the argument of his
school being that the too detailed reproducing of Nature (on the stage)
acts as a check to the imagination, whereas by the judicious selection
of harmonics, the imagination is stimulated to its utmost creative
capacity. One detects this creed to-day in certain styles of home
decoration (woman's background), as well as in woman's costumes.
_Portable Backgrounds_
The staging of a recent play showed more plainly than any words, the
importance of background. In one of the scenes, beautiful, artistic
gowns in delicate shades were set off by a room with wonderful green
walls and woodwork (mignonette). Now, so long as the characters moved
about the room, they were thrown into relief most charmingly, but the
moment the women seated themselves on a very light coloured and
characterless chintz sofa, they lost their decorative value. It was
lacking in harmony and contrast. The two black sofa cushions intended
possibly to serve as background, being small, instantly disappeared
behind the seated women.
A sofa of contrasting colour, or black, would have looked better in the
room, and served as immediate background for gowns. It might have been
covered in dark chintz, a silk damask in one or several tones, or a
solid colour, since the gowns were of delicate indefinite shades.
One of the sofas did have a dark Chinese coat thrown over the back, with
the intent, no doubt, of serving as effective background, but the point
seemed to escape the daintily gowned young woman who poured tea, for she
failed to take advantage of it, occupying the opposite end of the sofa.
A modern addition to a woman's toilet is a large square of chiffon,
edged with narrow metal or crystal fringe, or a gold or silver flexible
cord. This scarf is always in beguiling contrast to the costume, and
when not being worn, is thrown over the chair or end of sofa against
which our lady reclines. To a certain degree, this portable background
makes a woman decorative when the wrong colour on a chair might convert
her lovely gown into an eyesore.
One woman we know, who has an Empire room, admires the lines of her sofa
as furniture, but feels it ineffective unless one reclines á la Mme.
Récamier. To obviate this difficulty, she has had made a square (one and
a half yards), of lovely soft mauve silk damask, lined with satin
charmeuse of the same shade, and weighted by long, heavy tassels, at the
corners; this she throws over the Empire roll and a part of the seat,
which are done in antique green velvet. Now the woman seated for
conversation with arm and elbow resting on the head, looks at ease,--a
part of the composition. The square of soft, lined silk serves at other
times as a couvrepied.