Etiquette

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 wears orange on the golf course. A skirt of burnt-orange serge of homespun or linen, and shirt-waists of orange linen or crepe de chine. A hat with a brim and a harem-veil (pinned across her nose under her eyes) of orange marquisette,—which is easier to breathe through than chiffon—allows her to play golf or tennis or to motor or even go out in a sailboat and keep her skin without a blemish.

Constance Style, who also has a skin that the sun destroys, wears orange playing tennis, but for bathing wears a high-neck and long-sleeved bathing suit and "makes her face up" (also the backs of her hands) with theatrical grease paint that has a good deal of yellow in it, and flesh color ordinary powder on top. The grease paint withstands hot sun and water, but it is messy. The alternative, however, is a choice between complexion or bathing, as it is otherwise prohibitive for the "sun afflicted" to have both.

The distorted circus-mirror clothes seen on men who know no better, are not a bit worse than the riding clothes seen on actresses in our best theaters and moving pictures—who ought to know better. Nothing looks worse than riding clothes made and worn badly, and nothing looks smarter than they when well made and well put on.

A riding habit, no matter what the fashion happens to be, is like a uniform, in that it must be made and worn according to regulations. It must above all be meticulously trig and compact. Nothing must be sticking out a thousandth part of an inch that can be flattened in.

A riding habit is the counterpart of an officer's uniform; it is not worn so as to make the wearer look pretty! A woman to look well in a habit must be smart or she is a sight! And nothing contributes so much to the "sights" we see at present as the attempt to look pretty instead of looking correct. The criticism is not intended for the woman who lives far off in the open country and jumps on a horse in whatever she happens to have on, but for those who dress "for looks" and ride in the parks of our cities, or walk on the stage and before the camera, in scenes meant to represent smart society!

To repeat, therefore, the young woman who wants to look pretty should confine her exercise to dancing. She can also hold a parasol over her head and sit in a canoe—or she can be pretty how and where she will, so long as it is not on a horse in the park or hunting-field. (To mention hunting-field is superfluous; the woman who can ride well enough to follow the hounds is too good a sportswoman, too great a lover of good form to be ignorant of the proper outline necessary to smartness of appearance in the saddle.)

In smartest English society it is not considered best form for a young girl to ride astride in the hunting-field or in the park after she is grown. A high-born English girl rides astride as a child, but as soon as she is old enough to be presented at Court, she appears at a Meet or in the "Row" in a lady's habit, trigly perfect in fit, and on a side-saddle. In America this is an extreme opinion, and it is only among the most fashionable that a young girl having all her life ridden in a man's saddle, finds the world a joyless place and parents cruel when she is no longer allowed to ride like a boy. But she becomes, in spite of her protests, "another who looks divine on a horse." And you can look divine too, if you choose! On second thoughts the adjective must be qualified. No one looks divine on a horse who is not thin as a shingle. But since diet produces a shingle shape and every one strong-minded (or vain) enough, can diet, you need only care enough to "count your calories" and be as slim as you please.

Next, the best habit possible. And best habits are expensive, and there are no "second best." A habit is good or it is bad. Whatever the present fashion may be, have your habit utterly conventional. Don't wear checks or have slant pockets, or eccentric cuffs or lapels; don't have the waist pinched in. Choose a plain dark or "dust" color. A night blue that has a few white hairs in the mixture does not show dust as much as a solid dark color, and a medium weight close material holds its shape better than a light loose weave.

You may wear a single white carnation or a few violets in your buttonhole—but no other trimming. Keep the idea of perfect clothes for men in mind, get nothing that the smartest man would not wear, and you can't go wrong. Get boots like those of a man, low-heeled and with a straight line from heel to back of top. Don't have the tops wider than absolutely necessary not to bind, and don't have them curved or fancy in shape. Be sure that there is no elbow sticking out like a horse's hock at the back of the boot, and don't have a corner on the inside edge of the sole. And don't try to wear a small size!

First, hair: Never mind if you look like Mme. Recamier with your hair fluffed and like a skinned rabbit with it tight back, tight, flat back it must go. Brush it smooth as you can, braid it or coil it about level with the top of your ears and wind it in a door mat, not a knob in the back.

If you have a great quantity of hair, you should take all the inner part of it, coil it on top of your head so it will go under your hat out of the way. Then take the outer edge of it and braid or wind it as flat as possible. A large bun at the back of the head is almost as bad as hair drawn over the ears at the side. If you have short hairs likely to blow, you must wear a hunting hair net. And if it is bobbed, it must be drawn back into a silk riding net and made to look trim.

Unless fashion turns itself upside down (which it is, of course, perfectly capable of doing), elaborate clothes, except evening ones, are entirely useless, even in Newport. We have all of us abandoned Paris fashions for country wear in favor of those of England. The Valenciennes insertions and trailing chiffons of some years ago, still seen at watering-places in France, have been entirely superseded by country clothes.

In going to any fashionable house in the country, you should take a dinner dress for each evening, with stockings and slippers to match. You need a country dress for each day, or if the weather is uncertain, a thick one and two thin ones, with a long coat, and a dress suitable for church. This one can perfectly well be a country dress, but not a "sports" one.

Do not take a big trunk full of all the things you don't need. Don't take sports clothes for all occasions if you are not a sportswoman. But if you do ride, or play tennis or golf, or skate or swim, be sure to take your own clothes and don't borrow other people's. There are plenty of ingeniously arranged week-end trunks, very compact in size, that have a hat compartment, holding from two to six hats, and plenty of room for a half a dozen dresses and their accessories.