RULES TO REMEMBER
Large figures require subdued colors.
The dominant color in your costume must harmonize with the color and the texture of your skin.
A contrasting or emphasizing color may be used to enhance the coloring of your eyes and hair.
Because it is not entirely necessary or desirable to exclude the lighter, brighter shades from the wardrobe, a few of these have been listed in the accompanying table. As a general thing, you will look best in dark colors; but in the warm weather, and for home wear, light colors are permissible and suitable, too. If the type requires the use of such shades in the evening, gowns made from them may be worn becomingly, provided they are properly chosen as to material, design, and trimming.
With the advent of each season’s new colors, search carefully for your colors, the ones that you know are becoming, bearing in mind all the while that tones, hues, or tints (light colors) emphasize, and that shades (dark colors) alone subdue, and then remember that both fabric and design definitely affect the color; so decide on all three simultaneously and thereby be wholly safe.
The extent of your attractiveness rests with you and don’t forget ever how very much a right color can help you. Haunt the shops for the beautiful, the flattering, the becoming thing. Don’t be satisfied to buy green, blue, or gray simply because it’s the season’s color—find the tone or shade of that color that is lovely for you—then you can be fashionably dressed and becomingly so.
CHAPTER IX
THE LINE OF YOUTH AND GRACE
There is a distinct difference between the appropriate clothes for the young stout girl and those for the elderly stout woman. The first must work to emphasize trim smartness; the second simplicity and becomingness. Not so much difference in the two, you will say, but think carefully about it and you will realize that there is a difference. The whole idea of dress is different at 20, let us say, than it is at 50. If you are 20, you may wear 20–year clothes, but if you are 50, you may wear 40–year clothes. And you can truly look 40 if you learn to blend the lines suited to youth and maturity and to do it skilfully.