HINTS ON DRESS FOR ELDERLY WOMEN.
Dress has much to do with a youthful or aged appearance. Shawls and long
mantles that fall from the shoulders give even youthful figures a look
of age, because the lines are long and dignified and without especial
grace. Beautiful wraps, or coats that do not come very far below the
hip-line, can be worn becomingly by elderly ladies, neither emphasizing
their years nor making them appear too frivolously attired. There is a
smack of truth in the maxim, _As a woman grows old the dress material
should increase in richness and decrease in brightness_. Handsome
brocades, soft, elegant silks, woollen textures, and velvets are
eminently suitable and becoming to women who are growing old.
Black, and black-and-white, soft white chiffon veiled in lace,
cashmeres, and such refined tissues should be selected by those in "the
first wrinkles of youth." Grays combined with filmy white material, dull
bronzes lightened with cream-tinted lace, are also charmingly
appropriate. Pale blue veiled in chiffon is another grateful
combination.
White should be worn more than it is by old ladies. It is so suggestive
of all that is clean, bright, and dainty; and if there is anything an
old lady should strive to be in her personal appearance it is dainty.
Exquisite cleanliness is one of the most necessary attributes of
attractive old age, and any texture that in its quality and color
emphasizes the idea of cleanliness should commend itself to those in
their "advanced youth."
Little old thin women, large ones too, for that matter, who are wrinkled
and colorless, should not wear diamonds. The dazzling white gems with
pitiless brilliancy bring out the pasty look of the skin. The soft glow
of pearls, the cloudlike effects of the opal, the unobtrusive lights of
the moonstone harmonize with the tints of hair and skin of the aged.
Elderly women should not wear bright flowers on their bonnets or hats.
Fresh-looking roses above a face that has lost its first youthfulness
only make that fact more obvious. Forget-me-nots, mignonettes, certain
pretty white flowers, the palest of pink roses, or the most delicate
tint of yellow veiled with lace are not inappropriate for those who do
not enjoy wearing sombre bonnets and hats which are composed only of
rich, black textures. Lace cleverly intermingled with velvet and
jewelled ornaments of dull, rich shades are exceedingly effective on the
head-gear of the old.
Those who are gray-haired--and indeed all women as they grow old--should
wear red above their brows instead of under their chins. A glint of rich
cardinal velvet, or a rosette of the same against gray hair is
beautiful.
Lace! Lace! Lace! and still more Lace for the old. _Lace is an essential
to the dress of a woman more than forty years of age_. Jabots, ruches,
yokes, cascades, vests, and gowns of lace, black or white, are all for
the old. Rich lace has an exquisitely softening effect on the
complexion. Thin women with necks that look like the strings of a violin
should swathe, smother, decorate, and adorn their throats with lace or
gossamer fabrics that have the same quality as lace. These airy
textures, in which light and shadow can so beautifully shift, subdue
roughnesses of the skin and harshness in lines. Old Dame Nature is the
prime teacher of these bewitching artifices. Note her fine effects with
mists and cobwebs, with lace-like moss on sturdy old oaks, the bloom on
the peach and the grape. Nature produces her most enchanting colorings
with dust and age. Laces, gauzes, mulls, chiffons, net, and gossamer
throw the same beautiful glamour over the face and they are fit and
charming accompaniments of gray hair, which is a wonderful softener of
defective complexions and hard facial lines.
Too much cannot be written upon the proper arrangement in the neck-gear
of the aged. The disfiguring wrinkles that make many necks unsightly may
be kept in obeyance by massaging. No matter what the fashion in
neck-gear, the aged must modify it to suit their needs. An old lady
with a thin, pipe-stem neck should adopt a full ruche and fluffy, soft
collar-bands. I cannot forbear repeating that tulle as light as thistle
bubbles, either white or gray or black, is exquisitely effective for
thin, scrawny necks. The fleshy, red neck should be softened with powder
and discreetly veiled in chemisettes of chiffon and delicate net.
Old ladies may keep in the style, thus being in the picture of the hour;
but it is one of the divine privileges of age that it can make its own
modes. Absolute cleanliness, cleanliness as exacting as that proper
nurses prescribe for babies, is the first and most important factor in
making old age attractive. Rich dress, in artistic colors, soft, misty,
esthetic, comes next; then the idealizing scarfs, collars, jabots, and
fichus of lace and tulles. Old people becomingly and artistically
attired have the charm of rare old pictures. If they have soul-illumined
faces they are precious masterpieces.