The woman who is chic is always a little different.  Not different in being behind fashion, but always slightly apart from it.  “Chic” is a borrowed adjective, but there is no English word to take the place of “elegant” which was destroyed utterly by the reporter or practical joker who said “elegant dresses,” and yet there is no synonym that will express the individuality of beautiful taste combined with personal dignity and grace which gives to a perfect costume an inimitable air of distinction. Une dame elegante is all of that!  And Mrs. Oldname is just such a person.  She follows fashion merely so far as is absolutely necessary.  She gets the latest model perhaps, but has it adapted to her own type, so that she has just that distinction of appearance that the sheep lack.  She has even clung with slight modifications to the “Worth” ball dress, and her “wrapped” or fitted bodice has continued to look the smartest in every ballroom in spite of the Greek drapery and one-piece meal bag and all the other kaleidoscopic changes of fashion the rest of us have been through.

But the average would-be independent who determines to stand her ground, saying, “These new models are preposterous!  I shall wear nothing of the sort!” and keeps her word, soon finds herself not at all an example of dignity but an object of derision.

=FASHION HAS LITTLE IN COMMON WITH BEAUTY=

Fashion ought to be likened to a tide or epidemic; sometimes one might define it as a sort of hypnotism, seemingly exerted by the gods as a joke.  Fashion has the power to appear temporarily in the guise of beauty, though it is the antithesis of beauty nearly always.  If you doubt it, look at old fashion plates.  Even the woman of beautiful taste succumbs occasionally to the epidemics of fashion, but she is more immune than most.  All women who have any clothes sense whatever know more or less the type of things that are their style—­unless they have such an attack of fashionitis as to be irresponsibly delirious.

To describe any details of dress, that will not be as “queer” to-morrow as to-day’s fashions are bound to be, would seem at the outset pretty much like writing about next year’s weather.  And yet, there is one unchanging principle which must be followed by every woman, man and child that is well dressed—­suitability.  Nor does suitability mean merely that you must choose clothes suitable to your age and appearance, and that you must get a ball dress for a ball, and a street dress to walk in; it means equally that you must not buy clothes out of proportion to your income, or out of keeping with your surroundings.

=DISPROPORTIONATE EXPENDITURE IN BAD TASTE=