About fifteen years ago the extravagance in women’s dress reached such a high-water mark that it was not unheard of for a New York woman to spend a third of her husband’s income on clothes.  All women of fashion bought clothes when it would not have occurred to them to buy furniture—­when it would have seemed preposterous to buy a piece of jewelry—­but clothes, clothes, and more clothes, each more hand-embroidered than the last, until just as it seemed that no dress was fit to be seen if it hadn’t a month or two of some one’s time embroidered on it, the work on clothes subsided, until now we are at the other extreme; no work is put on them at all.  At least, clothes to-day are much more sensible, and let us hope the sense will be lasting.

The war did at least make people realize that luxuries and trimmings could go too far.  Ten years ago the American woman who lived in a little cottage, who walked when she went out or took the street car, wore the same clothes exactly that Mrs. Gilding wore in her victoria, or trailed over a Ming rug.  The French woman has always been (and the American woman of taste is now) too great an artist to sit in a little room with its cotton-print slip covers, muslin curtains, and geranium pots on the window ledge, in anything strikingly elaborate and expensive.  Charming as her dress may be in line and cut and color, she keeps it (no matter how intrinsically good it may be) in harmony with her geranium pots and her chintz.

On the other hand, clothes that are too plain can be equally out of proportion.  Last winter, for instance, a committee of ladies met in what might safely be called the handsomest house in New York, in a room that would fit perfectly in the Palace of Versailles, filled with treasures such as those of the Wallace collection.  The hostess presided in a black serge golf skirt, a business woman’s white shirt-waist, and stout walking boots, her hair brushed flat and tidily back and fastened as though for riding, her face and hands redolent of soap.  No powder, not a nail manicured.  Had she been a girl earning her living, she could not have been more suitably dressed, but her millions and her palace background demand that her clothes be at least moderately in keeping.

One does not have to be dowdy as an alternative to being too richly dressed, and to define differences between clothes that are notable because of their distinction and smartness, and clothes that are merely conspicuous and therefore vulgar, is a very elusive point.  However, there are certain rules that seem pretty well established.

=VULGAR CLOTHES=

Vulgar clothes are those which, no matter what the fashion of the moment may be, are always too elaborate for the occasion; too exaggerated in style, or have accessories out of proportion.  People of uncultivated taste are apt to fancy distortions; to exaggerate rather than modify the prevailing fashions.