Part 101

Warm greens contrast with crimson and harmonize with yellows.

Warm greens contrast with maroon and harmonize with orange.

Warm greens contrast with purple and harmonize with citrine.

Warm greens contrast with red and harmonize with sky-blue.

Warm greens contrast with pink and harmonize with gray.

Orange contrasts with purple and harmonizes with yellow.

Orange contrasts with blues and harmonizes with red.

Orange contrasts with black and harmonizes with warm green.

Orange contrasts with olive and harmonizes with warm brown.

Citrine contrasts with brown and harmonizes with green.

Citrine contrasts with crimson and harmonizes with buff.

Russet contrasts with green and harmonizes with red.

Olive contrasts with white and harmonizes with black.

Olive contrasts with maroon and harmonizes with brown.

Gold contrasts with any dark color, but looks richer with purple, green, blue, black and brown than with the other colors. It harmonizes with all light color, but least with yellow. The best harmony is with white.

Dress for Special Occasions

"The beautiful is the suitable." "A woman careless of her dress is either unloved, or unhappy." "Dress is to the body what good sense is to the mind." "Dress is really a department of manners," and appeals to the eye with the same force that gracious words and softly keyed voices appeal to the ear. Costliness is not the measure of the beauty of dress. Nay, rather suitability, harmony, becomingness, unobtrusiveness, fitness for the place and person are the qualities that make it perfect.

And because these canons of good taste are so frequently sinned against it has seemed best to give the proper dress and appointments for the proper times. Not as to particular styles for they are fleeting as the breath of fashion, but as to general principles which are well nigh changeless. Once certain of these fundamental principles, embarrassment and self-consciousness are banished.

Dress at Home.

It is, perhaps, the dress at home that tells most of the care and character of the wearer. Much regard is given to the dress for other occasions, but here comes the test of delicacy and refinement, the criterion of the individual.

Neatness is the first requisite, suitability the second. There is nothing more of an offense to good taste than seeing the delicate fabric, the ribbons, the laces of a once elegant toilet, degraded to the uses of the kitchen, spotted and soiled almost beyond recognition.

Have gowns adapted to the tasks for which they are intended. The neat gingham, the plain wool gown, are pretty and appropriate for the morning wear of any lady who must superintend the workings of her own household. Aprons, gloves, dust caps, which can be quickly doffed and will leave her neat and presentable for the stray morning caller without the necessity, on her part, of a change of costume, and on his, of a tedious waiting.

For afternoon the prettiest of toilets may be worn in the shape of house-dresses, or tea-jackets made of otherwise useless remnants of bright silks, and ribbons may be used to wear with otherwise presentable skirts whose original bodices have been long outworn. Trains, medium, are always pretty in the house, hence tea-gowns, from the richest to the most modest in cost, are always in favor. Avoid very short skirts for the house; they are awkward, and belittle you from a mental as well as a physical standpoint.

Observe the utmost neatness in every detail of the toilet for home or street. It is an old rule, but a very good one, that a woman may be judged "by her boots, gloves and pocket-handkerchiefs." To this may be added "finger nails," and last but not least, skirt edges. "No matter how elegant the general get-up may be," asserts one fastidious critic, "if a woman's skirt binding is muddy, frayed, or pendant, she is, to my mind, not a gentlewoman."

The General Fitness.

The style of the person should have much to do with choosing the style of dress for any occasion. Only people lacking the slightest originality of mind would think of blindly following the dictates of fashion without any reference to their own physical style.

Very short women should not wear very large hats. Women with very thin faces should avoid wide hat brims and many plumes. Women with large, full faces should not go to the extreme in wearing small bonnets. To do so is but to exaggerate the defect in each case. No matter what the extremity of style may be, there is always a happy medium from which to choose.

Flying curls and a great superabundance of ribbons and fluttering ends belong only to a young girl. To persist in an extremely youthful style of dress long after the passing of youth, instead of adding to the apparent youth of the wearer, simply defeats its own end by exaggerating the defects it was meant to conceal.