els are preposterous! I shall wear nothing of the
sort!" and keeps her word, soon finds herself not at all an example of
dignity but an object of derision.

=FASHION HAS LITTLE IN COMMON WITH BEAUTY=

Fashion ought to be likened to a tide or epidemic; sometimes one might
define it as a sort of hypnotism, seemingly exerted by the gods as a joke.
Fashion has the power to appear temporarily in the guise of beauty, though
it is the antithesis of beauty nearly always. If you doubt it, look at old
fashion plates. Even the woman of beautiful taste succumbs occasionally to
the epidemics of fashion, but she is more immune than most. All women who
have any clothes sense whatever know more or less the type of things that
are their style--unless they have such an attack of fashionitis as to be
irresponsibly delirious.

To describe any details of dress, that will not be as "queer" to-morrow as
to-day's fashions are bound to be, would seem at the outset pretty much
like writing about next year's weather. And yet, there is one unchanging
principle which must be followed by every woman, man and child that is
well dressed--suitability. Nor does suitability mean merely that you must
choose clothes suitable to your age and appearance, and that you must get
a ball dress for a ball, and a street dress to walk in; it means equally
that you must not buy clothes out of proportion to your income, or out of
keeping with your surroundings.

=DISPROPORTIONATE EXPENDITURE IN BAD TASTE=

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 clot