The sailor-hat or any style bordering on it should be selected with utmost discrimination.  This mode is unbecoming to a woman more than forty; or, to one who through grief or worry prematurely attains a look of age, or to one whose features are irregular.  The straight brim across the face is very trying.  It casts a shadow deepening the “old marks” and instead of being a frame to set off, it seems to cut off, the face at an inartistic angle.

The woman with angular features, as may be seen by No. 33, can wear with impunity, and always should wear, a hat the brim of which is waved, turned, twisted, or curved in graceful lines.  The uneven brim of her hat makes an effective complement to the angularity of her chin, which is further softened by the feathery ruff that encircles her throat.  The curves of the ostrich plumes, and the studied carelessness of the arrangement of her coiffure, subdue the angles of her face which are brought out in unbecoming prominence by the sailor-hat.

Women Who should Not Wear Horns.

The velvet horns on either side of a hat, the steeple-like central adornments that were once much in favor, and the Mercury wings that ornament the coiffure for evening dress, produce some startling, disagreeable, and amusing effects not altogether uninteresting to consider.

Faces in which the eyes are set too near the forehead acquire a scared look by being surmounted by a bonnet upon which the trimming gravitates to a point in an arrangement not unsuggestive of a reversed fan, horns, or a steeple.

The most unpleasing developments result from the wearing of the horn-like trimmings either in velvet or jet.  If the face above which they flare has less of the spiritual than the coarse propensities in it, the grotesque turns and twists in the head-gear emphasize the animality in the lines characteristic of low-bred tendencies, and the whole countenance is vulgarized.  One face acquires the look of a fox, another of a certain type of dog, and so on.

The most amusing exaggerations of distinctive facial lines are produced by Mercury wings.  The good-natured woman of the familiar type depicted in No. 34 brings every bovine attribute of her placid countenance into conspicuous relief by surmounting her face with the wings of the fleet-footed god.  The cow-like form and serenity of her features are made laughably obvious.

[Illustration:  No. 34]

Short, delicately-faced women can adorn their coiffures with Mercury wings with most charming results.  Wings, or perpendicular bows, add length to the lines of the short face, giving it a certain suggestion of refinement and distinction that is wholly destroyed by the wearing of any trimmings that show at the sides.

No matter what the prevailing style these rules may be practically applied.

CHAPTER III.