The passion for unity of costume has been one of the most encouraging signs in the dress of the present day, and, allowing for eccentricities of shortness and tightness, Englishwomen have rarely been dressed with more taste and retticence, both in colour and design. This extends also to fittings and extras of every kind, and, this "degree of excellence having been reached, it is probably only natural that a certain degree of dullness should ensue. Perfection, or rather less than perfection, in things has always something of the suggestion 8 of the overblown, and, now that dressmakers and tailors have learnt to make certain kinds of clothes with a skill beyond the experimental stage, there is a definite tendency to make of two and two rather more than four.
This variety lies rather in fittings and subordinate articles of dress than in the main outlines. Coats and skirts, for instance, can be Jong or short, tight or loose, trimmed or untrimmed, and there the matter ends. But for their two and two to make the five that constitutes good dressing it is the additional features that count. The short coat and skirt, whether the coat be very, very short or three-quarter length, is no longer worn in the bald fashion of the last year or two. The severity of no collar, which was hard upon the thin, is being mitigated by all sorts of indulgences in the way of vests, collars, sailor collars, waistcoate, jabots.
"Too great use of these mitigations, indeed, will make for a fussiness which had almost become old-fashioned. At present they are tentative, and a rather pretty collar and vest is made quite frankly of rows of Valen-giennes lace, slightly gathered to look both lacey and soft. Where the collar is still absent, a really fussy vest is frequently used, the rows of lace being arranged to overflow a high satin waistband or sash. Jabots, while tight at the close of the neck, must flow as well, and are exceedingly becoming for face with a smooth outline.
Frost Wuo Do Nor Tryst Tarr Necks.
The lace or net blouse is gradually finding its way back again into Popularity and is worn with the short coats and with a high waist-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.