Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/224

180 Fates is the Gooseberry-fool's dress, which may be compassed with petticoats of pale-green silk fringed with gooseberries of padded silk, and on the head a fool's cap with pendent gooseberries as bells.

As a dress easy of achievement I can quote that one sketched here in colour, the Seville Orange. The dress and bodice of orange-coloured silk bear an application of padded oranges and leaves on the skirt, beneath a chenille fringe of black with heavy netting, velvet streamers and oranges are used at discretion to adorn the hair, and the petticoats beneath the yellow skirt are of green, the stockings and shoes being of the same tone.

At a fancy-dress ball the costume which is merely original and not pretty should be condemned except when the novelty prize is the desideratum of the occasion. There have been some remarkable costumes designed, which have proclaimed every scientific invention, and others which have illustrated topical scenes and current events, involving much special preparation and printing, and invariably presenting some difficulty when the great question of head-dress had to be answered becomingly. It is not easy to convey a Marconi system as a hat, nor can it be considered a simple task to invest a coiffure elegantly with the best principles of an air-ship, even though the ladies of long ago saw fit to crown themselves with the last cry in Armadas. It is on record that the audacious actor, Samuel Foote, distinguished himself by appearing at a masquerade in an abnormally exaggerated caricature of this fashion—a policy which led more directly to the discomfiture of Samuel Foote than to any serious contempt for the fashions he held up to ridicule.