=A FEW GENERAL REMARKS=

The fault of bad taste is usually in over-dressing.  Quality not effect, is the standard to seek for.  Machine-made passementerie on top of conspicuous but sleazy material is always shoddy.  Cut and fit are the two items of greatest importance in women’s clothes, as well as in men’s.  But fashion changes too rapidly to make value of material always wise expenditure for one of slender purse.  Better usually have two dresses, each cut and made in the whim of the moment, than one which must be worn after the whim has become a freak.  In men’s clothes the opposite rule should be followed since good style in men’s clothes is unchanging.

To buy things at sales is very much like buying things at an auction; if you really know what you want and something about values, you can often do marvellously well; but if you are easily bewildered and know little of values, you are apt to spend your good money on trash.  A woman of small means must either be (or learn to be) discriminatingly careful, or she would better have her clothes made at home, or if she is of “model” type, buy them ready-made.  The ready-to-wear clothes in the Misses’ Department are growing every year better looking; unfortunately and for some inexplicable reason, the usual Women’s Department does not compare in good taste in selection of models with the former, and it is unusual to find a dress that a lady of fashion would choose except among the imported models, for which store prices are as a rule higher than those asked by the greatest dressmakers.  Evening clothes are still usually unbuyable by the over-fastidious, except for a certain flapper type (and an undistinguished one at that!), and the ultra-smart woman is still obliged to go to the private importers for her debutante daughter’s ball-dresses as well as her own—­or else into her own sewing-room.

=FASHION AND FAT=

For years the thin, even the scrawny, have had everything their own way.  The woman who is fat, or even plump, has a rather hopeless problem unless fashion goes to Turkey for its next inspiration, which is so unlikely it is almost possible!  Two things the fat woman should avoid:  big patterns and the stiff tailor-made.  Fat women look better in feminine clothes that follow in the wake, never in the advance, of modified fashion.  Fat women should never wear elaborate clothes or clothes in light colors or heavily feathered hats.

The tendency of fat is to take away from one’s gracility; therefore, any one inclined to be fat must be ultra conservative—­in order to counteract the effect.  Very tight clothes make fat people look fatter and thin people thinner.  Satin is a bad material, since high lights are too shimmeringly accentuated.

Heavy ankles, needless to say, should never be clothed in light stockings and dark shoes; long, pointed slippers accentuate a thick ankle, and so does a short skirt that has a straight hem.  A “ragged” edge is most flattering.  Dress, stockings and slippers to match are unavoidable in evening dress, but when possible a thick ankle should have a dark stocking—­or at least a slipper to match the stocking.