Etiquette - Emily Post (english novels for students TXT) 📗

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.

For example: A conspicuous evidence of bad style that has persisted through numberless changes in fashion, is the over-dressed and over-trimmed head. The woman of uncultivated taste has no more sense of moderation than the Queen of the Cannibals. She will elaborate her hair-dressing to start with (this is all right, if elaboration really suits her type) and then she will "decorate" it with everything in the way of millinery and jewelry that she can lay her hands on. Or, in the daytime, she fancies equally over-weighted hats, and rich-looking fur coats and the latest edition in the most conspicuous possible footwear. And she much prefers wearing rings to gloves. Maybe she thinks they do not go together? She despises sensible clothing; she also despises plain fabrics and untrimmed models. She also cares little (apparently) for staying at home, since she is perpetually seen at restaurants and at every public entertainment. The food she orders is rich, the appearance she makes is rich; in fact, to see her often is like nothing so much as being forced to eat a large amount of butter-plain.

Beau Brummel's remark that when one attracted too much notice, one could be sure of being not well-dressed but over-dressed, has for a hundred years been the comfort of the dowdy. It is, of course, very often true, but not invariably. A person may be stared at for any one of many reasons. It depends very much on the stare. A woman may be stared at because she is indiscreet, or because she looks like a left-over member of the circus, or because she is enchanting to look at.

If you are much stared at, what sort of a stare do you usually meet? Is it bold, or mocking, or is it merely that people look at you wistfully? If the first, change your manner; if the second, wear more conventional clothes; if the third, you may be left as you are. But be sure of your diagnosis of this last.

Extravagance Not Vulgarity

Ostentation is always vulgar but extravagance is not necessarily vulgar—not by any means. Extravagance can become dishonest if carried beyond one's income.

Nearly everything that is beautiful or valuable is an extravagance—for most of us. Always to wear new gloves is an extravagant item for one with a small allowance—but scarcely vulgar! A laundry bill can be extravagant, flowers in one's city house, a piece of beautiful furniture, a good tapestry, each is an extravagance to an income that can not easily afford the expenditure. To one sufficient to buy the tapestry, the flowers are not an extravagance at all.

To buy quantities of things that are not even used after they are bought is sheer wastefulness, and to buy everything that tempts you, whether you can afford to pay for it or not, is, if you can not afford it, verging on the actually dishonest.

Dresses For Dinners And Balls

Supposing, since clothes suitable to the occasion are the first requisite of good taste, we take up a few details that are apart from fashion.

A dinner dress really means every sort of low, or half low evening dress. A formal dinner dress, like a ball dress, is always low-necked and without sleeves, and is the handsomest type of evening dress that there is. A ball dress may be exquisite in detail but it is often merely effective. The perfect ball dress is one purposely designed with a skirt that is becoming when dancing. A long wrapped type of dress would make Diana herself look like a toy monkey-on-a-stick, but might be dignified and beautiful at a dinner. A dinner dress differs from a ball dress in little except that it is not necessarily designed for freedom of movement.

Hair ornaments always look well at a ball but are not especially appropriate (unless universally in fashion) on other occasions. A lady in a ball dress with nothing added to the head, looks a little like being hatless in the street. This sounds like a contradiction of the criticism of the vulgarian. But because a tiara is beautiful at a ball, or a spray of feathers, or a high comb, or another ornament, does not mean that all of these should be put on together and worn in a restaurant; which is just what the vulgarian would do. Whether, to wear a head-dress, however, depends not alone upon fashion but upon the individual. If the type of hair ornament at the moment in fashion is becoming, wear it, especially to balls and in a box at the opera. But if it is not becoming, don't.

Ladies of fashion, by the way, do not have their hair especially dressed for formal occasions. Each wears her hair a certain way, and it is put up every morning just as carefully as for a ball. The only time it is arranged differently is for riding. An informal dinner dress is merely a modified formal one. It is low in front and high in the back, with long or elbow sleeves--or perhaps it is Dutch neck and no sleeves.

When trains are in fashion, all older women should wear them. Fashion or no fashion, no woman who has passed forty looks really well in a cut-off evening dress. An effect of train, however, can very adequately be produced with any arrangement or trimming that extends upon the floor.

The informal dinner dress is worn to the theater, the restaurant (of high class), the concert and the opera. Informal dinner dresses are worn in the boxes at the opera on ordinary nights, such as when no especially great star is to sing, and when one is not going on to a ball afterward, but a ball dress is never inappropriate, especially without head-dress. On gala nights, ball dresses are worn in the boxes and head-dresses and as many jewels as one chooses—or has.

The Tea-Gown

Every one knows that a tea-gown is a hybrid between a wrapper and a ball dress. It has always a train and usually long flowing sleeves; is made of rather gorgeous materials and goes on easily, and its chief use is not for wear at the tea-table so much as for dinner alone with one's family.

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.

A Suggestion To Those Who Mind Sunburn

No advice is intended for those who have a skin that either does not burn at all, or turns a beautiful smooth Hawaiian brown; but a woman whose creamy complexion bursts into freckles, as violent as they are hideous, at the first touch of the sun need no longer stay perpetually indoors in daytime, or venture out only when swathed like a Turk, if she knows the virtue in orange as a color that defies the sun's rays. A thin veil of red-orange is more effective than a thick one of blue or black.

Orange shirt-waists do not sound very conservative, but they are mercifully conserving to arms sensitive to sunburn. Young Mrs. Gilding, whose skin is as perishable as it is lovely, always