Twentieth Century Culture and Deportment / Or the Lady and Gentleman at Home and Abroad; Containing Rules of Etiquette for All Occasions, Including Calls; Invitations; Parties; Weddings; Receptions; Dinners and Teas; Etiquette of the Street; Public Places, Etc., Etc. Forming a Complete Guide to Self-Culture; the Art of Dressing Well; Conversation; Courtship; Etiquette for Children; Letter-Writing; Artistic Home and Interior Decorations, Etc.

by Maud C. Cooke

The General Fitness.

The style of the person should have much to do with choosing the style of dress for any occasion. Only people lacking the slightest originality of mind would think of blindly following the dictates of fashion without any reference to their own physical style.

Very short women should not wear very large hats. Women with very thin faces should avoid wide hat brims and many plumes. Women with large, full faces should not go to the extreme in wearing small bonnets. To do so is but to exaggerate the defect in each case. No matter what the extremity of style may be, there is always a happy medium from which to choose.

Flying curls and a great superabundance of ribbons and fluttering ends belong only to a young girl. To persist in an extremely youthful style of dress long after the passing of youth, instead of adding to the apparent youth of the wearer, simply defeats its own end by exaggerating the defects it was meant to conceal.

Small, thin women should not wear too much black. Let them wear a profusion of fluffy laces about the throat; soft, puffy vests, or, as one writer observes, “learn something from Sara Bernhardt and her consummate skill in concealing bones.”

Short, stout women should see that all adornments, such as folds, plaits, etc., keep as much as possible in perpendicular lines. It is a mistake to think that perfect plainness will disguise the breadth, it rather emphasizes it. On this style of woman a loosely-fitted wrap has a better effect for the street than a tight, plain garment.