THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CLOTHES

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Colourless jewels should adorn your perfect blond, colourful gems your glowing

brunette.

What of those betwixt and between? In such cases let complexion and colour of

eyes act as guide in the choice of colours.

One is familiar with various trite rules such as match the eyes, carry out the general

scheme of your colouring, by which is meant, if you are a yellow blond, go in for

yellows, if your hair is ash-brown, your eyes but a shade deeper, and your skin

inclined to be lifeless in tone, wear beaver browns and content yourself with

making a record in harmony, with no contrasting note.

Just here let us say that the woman in question must at the very outset decide

whether she would look pretty or chic, sacrificing the one for the other, or if she

insists upon both, carefully arrange a compromise. As for example, combine a semi

-picture hat with a semi-tailored dress.

The strictly chic woman of our day goes in for appropriateness; the lines of the

latest fashion, but adapted to bring out her own best points, while concealing her

bad ones, and an insistance upon a colour and a shade of colour, sufficiently

definite to impress the beholder at a glance. This type of woman as a rule keeps to a

few colours, possibly one or two and their varieties, and prefers gowns of one

material rather than combinations of materials. Though she possess both style and

beauty, she elects to emphasise style.

In the case of the other woman, who would star her face at the expense of her tout

ensemble, colour is her first consideration, multiplication of detail and intelligent

expressing of herself in her mise-en-scène. Seduisant, instead of chic is the word

for this woman.

Your black-haired woman with white skin and dark, brilliant eyes, is the one who

can best wear emerald green and other strong colours. The now fashionable

mustard, sage green, and bright magentas are also the affaire of this woman with

clear skin, brilliant colour and sparkling eyes.

These same colours, if subdued, are lovely on the middle-aged woman with black

hair, quiet eyes and pale complexion, but if her hair is grey or white, mustard and

sage green are not for her, and the magenta must be the deep purplish sort, which

combines with her violets and mauves, or delicate pinks and faded blues. She will

be at her best in shades of grey which tone with her hair.

CHAPTER IV

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CLOTHES

AS the reader ever observed the effect of clothes upon manners? It is

amazing, and only proves how pathetically childlike human nature is.

Put any woman into a Marie Antoinette costume and see how, during an

evening she will gradually take on the mannerisms of that time. This very point was

brought up recently in conversation with an artist, who in referring to one of the

most successful costume balls ever given in New York--the crinoline ball at the

old Astor House--spoke of how our unromantic Wall Street men fell to the spell of

stocks, ruffled shirts and knickerbockers, and as the evening advanced, were quite

themselves in the minuette and polka, bowing low in solemn rigidity, leading their

lady with high arched arm, grasping her pinched-in waist, and swinging her

beruffled, crinolined form in quite the 1860 manner.

Some women, even girls of tender years, have a natural instinct for costuming

themselves, so that they contribute in a decorative way to any setting which chance

makes theirs. Watch children "dressing up" and see how among a large number,

perhaps not more than one of them will have this gift for effects. It will be she who

knows at a glance which of the available odds and ends she wants for herself, and

with a sure, swift hand will wrap a bright shawl about her, tie a flaming bit of silk

about her dark head, and with an assumed manner, born of her garb, cast a magic

spell over the small band which she leads on, to that which, without her intense

conviction and their susceptibility to her mental attitude toward the masquerade,

could never be done.

This illustrates the point we would make as to the effect of clothes upon

psychology. The actor's costume affects the real actor's psychology as much or

more than it does that of his audience. He is the man he has made himself appear.

The writer had the experience of seeing a well-known opera singer, when a victim

to a bad case of the grippe, leave her hotel voiceless, facing a matinee of Juliet.

Arrived in her dressing-room at the opera, she proceeded to change into the

costume for the first act. Under the spell of her rôle, that prima donna seemed

literally to shed her malady with her ordinary garments, and to take on health and

vitality with her Juliet robes. Even in the Waltz song her voice did not betray her,

and apparently no critic detected that she was indisposed.

In speaking of periods in furniture, we said that their story was one of waves of

types which repeated themselves, reflecting the ages in which they prevailed. With

clothes we find it is the same thing: the scarlet, and silver and gold of the early

Jacobeans, is followed by the drabs and greys of the Commonwealth; the

marvellous colour of the Church, where Beauty was enthroned, was stamped out by

the iron will of Cromwell who, in setting up his standard of revolt, wrapped soul

and body of the new Faith in penal shades.

New England was conceived in this spirit and as mind had affected the colour of

the Puritans' clothes, so in turn the drab clothes, prescribed by their new creed,

helped to remove colour from the New England mind and nature.

PLATE VII

Fifteenth-century costumes on the Holy

Women at the Tomb of our Lord.

The sculpture relief is enamelled terra-cotta

in white, blue, green, yellow and manganese

colours. It bears the date 1487.

Note character of head-dresses, arrangement

of hair, capes and gowns which are Early

Renaissance. (Metropolitan Museum.)

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Woman in Art of the Renaissance

Sculpture-Relief in Terra-Cotta: Holy Women

But observe how, as prosperity follows privation, the mind expands, reaching out

for what the changed psychology demands. It is the old story of Rome grown rich

and gay in mood and dress. There were of course, villains in Puritan drab and

Grecian white, but the child in every man takes symbol for fact. So it is that to-day,

some shudder with the belief that Beauty, re-enthroned in all her gorgeous modern

hues, means near disaster. The progressives claim that into the world has come a

new hope; that beneath our lovely clothes of rainbow tints, and within our homes

where Beauty surely reigns, a new psychology is born to radiate colour from

within.

Our advice to the woman not born with clothes sense, is: employ experts until you

acquire a mental picture of your possibilities and limitations, or buy as you can

afford to, good French models, under expert supervision. You may never turn out to

be an artist in the treatment of your appearance, instinctively knowing how a

prevailing fashion in line and colour may be adapted to you, but you can be taught

what your own type is, what your strong points are, your weak ones, and how,

while accentuating the former, you may obliterate the latter.

There are two types of women familiar to all of us: the one gains in vital charm and

abandon of spirit from the consciousness that she is faultlessly gowned; the other

succumbs to self-consciousness and is pitifully unable to extricate her mood from

her material trappings.

For the darling of the gods who walks through life on clouds, head up and spirit-

free, who knows she is perfectly turned out and lets it go at that, we have only

grateful applause. She it is who carries every occasion she graces--indoors, out-of-

doors, at home, abroad. May her kind be multiplied!

But to the other type, she who droops under her silks and gold tissue, whose pearls

are chains indeed, we would throw out a lifeline. Submerged by clothes, the more

she struggles to rise above them the more her spirit flags. The case is this: the

woman's mind is wrong; her clothes are right--lovely as ever seen; her jewels

gems; her house and car and dog the best. It is her mind that is wrong; it is turned

in, instead of out.

Now this intense and soul-, as well as line-destroying self-consciousness, may be

prenatal, and it may result from the Puritan attitude toward beauty; that old New

England point of view that the beautiful and the vicious are akin. Every young child

needs to have cultivated a certain degree of self-reliance. To know that one's

appearance is pleasing, to put it mildly, is of inestimable value when it comes to

meeting the world. Every child, if normal, has its good points--hair, eyes, teeth,

complexion or figure; and we all know that many a stage beauty has been built up

on even two of these attributes. Star your good points, clothes will help you. Be a

winner in your own setting, but avoid the fatal error of damning your clothes by the

spirit within you.

The writer has in mind a woman of distinguished appearance, beauty, great wealth,

few cares, wonderful clothes and jewels, palatial homes; and yet an envious unrest

poisons her soul. She would look differently, be different and has not the wisdom to

shake off her fetters. Her perfect dressing helps this woman; you would not be

conscious of her otherwise, but with her natural equipment, granted that she

concentrated upon flashing her spirit instead of her wealth, she would be a leader in

a fine sense. The Beauty Doctor can do much, but show us one who can put a

gleam in the eye, tighten the grasp, teach one that ineffable grace which enables

woman, young or old, to wear her clothes as if an integral part of herself. This

quality belongs to the woman who knows, though she may not have thought it out,

that clothes can make one a success, but not a success in the enduring sense. Dress

is a tyrant if you take it as your god, but on the other hand dress becomes a

magician's wand when dominated by a clever brain. Gown yourself as beautifully

as you can afford, but with judgment. What we do, and how we do it, is often

seriously and strangely affected by what we have on. The writer has in mind a

literary woman who says she can never talk business except in a linen collar! Mark

Twain, in his last days, insisted that he wrote more easily in his night-shirt. Richard

Wagner deliberately put on certain rich materials in colours and hung his room with

them when composing the music of The Ring. Chopin says in a letter to a friend:

"After working at the piano all day, I find that nothing rests me so much as to get

into the evening dress which I wear on formal occasions." In monarchies based on

militarism, royal princes, as soon as they can walk, are put into military uniforms. It

cultivates in them the desired military spirit. We all associate certain duties with

certain costumes, and the extraordinary response to colour is familiar to all. We talk

about feeling colour and say that we can or cannot live in green, blue, violet or red.

It is well to follow this colour instinct in clothes as well as in furnishing. You will

find you are at your best in the colours and lines most sympathetic to you.

We know a woman who is an unusual beauty and has distinction, in fact is noted

for her chic when in white, black or the combination. She once ventured a cerise

hat and instantly dropped to the ranks of the commonplace. Fine eyes, hair, skin,

teeth, colour and carriage were still hers, but her effectiveness was lessened as that

of a pearl might be if set in a coral circle.

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