ESTABLISH HABITS OF CARRIAGE WHICH CREATE GOOD LINE

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COLOUR IN WOMAN'S COSTUME >>

CHAPTER V

ESTABLISH HABITS OF CARRIAGE WHICH CREATE GOOD

LINE

OMAN'S line is the result of her costume, in part only. Far more is

woman's costume affected by her line. By this we mean the line she

habitually falls into, the pose of torso, the line of her legs in action, and

when seated, her arms and hands in repose and gesture, the poise of her

head. It is woman's line resulting from her habit of mind and the control which her

mind has over her body, a thing quite apart from the way God made her, and the

expression her body would have had if left to itself, ungoverned by a mind stocked

with observations, conventions, experience and attitudes. We call this the physical

expression of woman's personality; this personality moulds her bodily lines and if

properly directed determines the character of the clothes she wears; determines also

whether she be a decorative object which says something in line and colour, or an

undecorative object which says nothing.

PLATE VIII

Queen Elizabeth in the absurdly elaborate

costume of the late Renaissance. Then

crinoline,

gaudy

materials,

and

ornamentations without meaning reached

their high-water mark in the costuming of

women.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Tudor England

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth

Woman to be decorative, should train the carriage of her body from childhood, by

wearing appropriate clothing for various daily rôles. There is more in this than at

first appears. The criticism by foreigners that Americans, both men and women,

never appear really at home in evening clothes, that they look as if they felt

dressed, is true of the average man and woman of our country and results from the

lax standards of a new and composite social structure. America as a whole, lacks

traditions and still embodies the pioneer spirit, equally characteristic of Australia

and other offshoots from the old world.

The little American girl who is brought up from babyhood to change for the

evening, even though she have a nursery tea, and be allowed only a brief good-

night visit to the grown-ups, is still the exception rather than the rule. A wee

English maiden we know, created a good deal of amused comment because, on

several occasions, when passing rainy afternoons indoors, with some affluent little

New York friends, whose luxurious nurseries and marvellous mechanical toys were

a delight, always insisted upon returning home,--a block distant,--to change into

white before partaking of milk toast and jam, at the nursery table, the American

children keeping on their pink and blue linens of the afternoon. The fact of white or

pink is unimportant, but our point is made when we have said that the mother of the

American children constantly remarked on the unconscious grace of the English tot,

whether in her white muslin and pink ribbons, her riding clothes, or accordion-

plaited dancing frock. The English woman-child was acquiring decorative lines by

wearing the correct costume for each occasion, as naturally as a bird wears its

feathers. This is one way of obviating self-consciousness.

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