It can, however, very properly be put on for tea, and if one is dining at home, kept on for dinner.  Otherwise a lady is apt to take tea in whatever dress she had on for luncheon, and dress after tea for dinner.

One does not go out to dine in a tea-gown except in the house of a member of one’s family or a most intimate friend.  One would wear a tea-gown in one’s own house in receiving a guest to whose house one would wear a dinner dress.

=WHEN IN DOUBT=

There is one rule that is fairly safe to follow:  When in doubt, wear the plainer dress.  It is always better far to be under-dressed than over-dressed.  If you don’t know whether to put on a ball dress or a dinner dress, wear the dinner dress.  Or, whether to wear cloth or brocade to a luncheon, wear the cloth.

=ON THE STREET=

Your tea-gowns, since they are never worn in public, can literally be as bizarre as you please, and if you are driving in a closed motor, you can also wear an “original” type of dress.  But in walking on the street,—­if you care to be taken for a well-bred person—­never wear anything that is exaggerated.  If skirts are short, don’t wear them two inches shorter than any one else’s; if they are long, don’t go down the street dragging a train and sweeping the dirt up on the under-flouncings. (Let us hope that fashion never comes back!) Don’t wear too much jewelry; it is in bad taste in the first place, and in the second, is a temptation to a thief.  And don’t under any circumstances, distort your figure into a grotesque shape.

=COUNTRY CLOTHES=

Nothing so marks the “person who doesn’t know” as inappropriate choice of clothes.  To wear elaborate clothes out of doors in the country, is quite as out of place as to parade “sports” clothes on the streets in town.

It is safe to say that “sport” clothes are appropriate country clothes—­especially for all young people.  Elderly ladies, needless to say, should not don “sporting eccentricities” nor wear sweaters to lunch parties; but sensible country clothes, such as have for many decades been worn in England, of homespun or serge or jersey cloth or whatever has replaced these materials, are certainly more appropriate to walk in than a town costume—­even for a lady of seventy!  Young people going to the country for the day wear sports clothes; which if seen early in the morning in town and again late in the afternoon, merely show you have been to the country.  But town clothes in the country proclaim your ignorance of fitness.  Even for a lunch party at Golden Hall or Great Estates, every one who is young wears smart country clothes.

=SHOES AND SLIPPERS=

Sport shoes are naturally adapted to the sport for which they are intended.  High-heeled slippers do not go with any country clothes, except organdie or muslins or other distinctly feminine “summer” dresses.  Elaborate afternoon dresses of “painted” chiffons, embroidered mulls, etc., are seen only at weddings, lawn parties, or at watering-places abroad.