Page:Book of Etiquette, Volume 2, by Lilian Eichler.djvu/181

Rh woman with fair skin. Pink and green are for youth; purple and black are for age. The other colors may be used according to the artistic sense of the wearer.

In selecting material for a gown, the fashionable modiste will first consider the eyes of the lady who is to wear it. Though few but the artist realize it, the eyes are the keynote of the entire costume. They determine whether the dress shall be frivolous or demure, gay or somber, vivid or soft. The color of the hair, also, is important in deciding the color of the gown itself. The soft colors—pink, green, violet, blue—are admirably adapted to blue eyes and light hair while the more brilliant colors are suitable for dark eyes and black hair.

So large a part does color play in the creating of fashions that one must give it correspondingly careful consideration in adapting it to one's complexion and hair. A wrong color has the alarming propensity of marring the beauty of the most charming gown—even as the use of the right color enhances the beauty of the most simple gown. With harmony, style and color the gown needs only the final touch of personality to make it perfect. And it is that of which we are now going to speak.

Dress is an index to character as surely as a table of contents is an index to what a book contains. We know by looking at an over-dressed young person, with a much-beruflled and ornamented frock, that she is vain. We know by glancing at a young man who wears an orange tie, checked hat, and twirls a bamboo cane, that he is inclined to be just the least bit gay. We know by the sim-