FOOTWEAR
Footwear points the costume; every child should be taught this.
Give most careful attention to your extremities,--shoes, gloves and
hats. The genius of fashion's greatest artist counts for naught if his
costume may not include hat, gloves, shoes, and we would add, umbrella,
parasol, stick, fan, jewels; in fact every detail.
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.
[Illustration: _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 trimmings, 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.