People should select colors that go with their skin.  And elderly women should not wear grass green, or Royal blue, or purple, or any hard color that needs a faultless complexion.  Swarthy skin always looks better in colors that have red or yellow in them.  A very sallow person in pale blue or apple green looks like a well-developed case of jaundice.

Pink and orchid are often very becoming to older women; and pale blue or yellow to those with fair skin.  Because a woman is no longer young is no reason why she should wear perpetual black—­unless she is fat.

=CLOTHES FOR TRAVELING IN EUROPE=

Ideal traveling clothes are those which do not wrinkle or show rain spots; and to find which these are it is necessary to take a sample of each material, sprinkle it with water, and twist it to see how much abuse it will stand.  Every woman knows what she likes best, and what she considers suitable.  Two alternating traveling dresses at least will be necessary, and two or three semi-evening dresses to put on for dinner.  One very simple half-dinner dress of black, that has a combination of trimmings such as described earlier in this chapter, is ideally useful.  Tourists do not put on evening clothes except in very fashionable centers, such as London, Paris, Monte Carlo or Deauville, and then only if staying at an ultra fashionable hotel.  To be over-dressed is always in bad taste.  So that unless you are going to visit or make several-day stops the one black evening dress suggested would answer every possible purpose.

If you intend staying for a long time in one place, you take all of your season’s clothes; and if you are going to visit in England, or to stay anywhere in the country, you will need country clothes, but not on ordinary touring.  For motoring, space is precious, and clothes should be chosen with the object of packing into small dimensions.  Motoring in Europe is cold.  A very warm, long wrap is necessary.  An old fur one is much the best, and a small, close hat that does not blow.

=CLOTHES AND PARIS=

It is something like this:  You have been hypnotized before, and you vow you won’t be again!  You make up your mind that you are going to get a black dress and a dark blue—­and nothing else.

You enter the lower reception hall and mount the bronze balustraded stairs half way when already Mlle. Marie is aware of your approach.  She greets you not only as though you are the only customer she has ever had, but as though your coming has saved—­just saved in time—­the prestige of the house.

She tells you breathlessly that you are just in time to see the parade of models; she puts you where you may have an uninterrupted view.  She then begins her greetings all over again by asking not alone after all the members of your family and an extraordinarily long list of friends, but makes a solicitous inquiry after each dress that she has ever sold you.  “Did Madame like her white velvet?” she