Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/310

256 arrangment of their tresses, and will dismiss all hankerings after the merely becoming in the higher interests of the entirely appropriate.

The most interesting actresses of to-day make a cult of costume, and are ever ready with views, theories, and even predilections. Miss Irene Vanbrugh, for example, who, with her sister, Miss Violet Vanbrugh, would seem to interpret all that is fashionable on the stage, and to speak materially the last word of modern style, quite unlike Miss Baird, who pleads for the lines of nature and. would kill fashion, frankly declares her favourite stage costume was the kimono in which she played that exciting scene in The Gay Lord Quex. Her experience of the crinoline period in Trelawny of the Wells with the frilled skirts, pork-pie hats, and the hair-nets, led Miss Vanbrugh to be thankful that in real life she had escaped fashions "so detestably uncomfortable."

Another typically elegant actress is Miss Ellis Jeffries, and her personal taste inclines towards the plainest and simplest costumes, as she told me, while adding, "Of course you won't believe me, but it's true. I choose my frocks to suit my circumstances on the stage, and also to some extent the emotions I have to express; and I insisted, in spite of criticism, that, when I had to play the part of an hysterical woman, I should robe her in scarlet. I felt I couldn't be hysterical in white muslin; could you?"

Miss Marie Tempest, exploiting to perfection the sartorial possibilities of Peg Woffington made her first appearance in that play in a dress of daffodil yellow with pointed bodice outlined with sable, the skirt trimmed with sable, and a lace cap