clever woman of slender means may rival her friends
with munition incomes, if only she will go to an expert with open mind,
and through the thoughtful purchase of a completed costume,--hat, gown
and all accessories,--learn an artist-modiste's point of view. Then, and
we would put it in italics; _take seriously, with conviction, all his or
her instructions as to the way to wear your clothes_. Anyone can _buy_
costumes, many can, perhaps own far more than you, but it is quite
possible that no one can more surely be a picture--a delightfully
decorative object on every occasion, than you, who knows instinctively
(or has been taught), beyond all shadow of doubt, how to put on and then
how to sit or walk in, your one tailored suit, your one tea gown, your
one sport suit or ball gown.

PLATE X

An ideal example of the typical costume of fashionable
England in the eighteenth century, when picturesqueness, not
appropriateness, was the demand of the times.

This picture is known as THE MORNING PROMENADE: SQUIRE
HALLET WITH HIS LADY. Painted by Thomas Gainsborough
and now in the private collection of Lord Rothschild,
London.

[Illustration: _Courtesy of Braun & Co., New York, London & Paris_
_Eighteenth Century England Portrait by Thomas Gainsborough_]

If you want to wear light spats, stop and think whether your heavy
ankles will not look more trim in boots with light, glove-fitting tops
and black vamps.

We have seen women with such slender ankles and shapely insteps, that
white slippers or low shoes might be worn with black or coloured
stockings. But it is playing safe to have your stockings match your
slippers or shoes.

Buckles and bows on slippers and pumps can destroy the line of a shoe
and hence a foot, or continue and accentuate line. There are fashions in
buckles and bows, but unless you bend the fashion until it allows
nature's work to appear at its best, it will destroy artistic intention.

Some people buy footwear as they buy fruit; they like what they see, so
they get it! You know so many women, young and old, who do this, that
our advice is, try to recall those who do not. Yes, now you see what we
aim at; the women you have in mind always continue the line of their
gowns with their feet. You can see with your mind's eye how the slender
black satin slippers, one of which always protrudes from the black
evening gown, carry to its eloquent finish the line from her h