A Winter Habit
Note standing martingale
For summer there is a much wider range of choice. For very warm weather, khaki, duck, crash, and linen habits are all suitable. They are all smart and cool and stand tubbing, or else can be regularly
scrubbed with a stiff hand brush and bath soap. This saves the risk of their being shrunk or starched out of shape by a careless laundress. It is essential that habits for use in warm weather should be of material that can be washed, and one should be sure to have the material shrunk before it is made up, else, when the rider puts it on after its first
wetting, she will probably present a “grown-up-in-the-night” appearance.
A Smart Summer Habit
It is a very good plan with summer habits to have two skirts made for each coat, as skirts become soiled much more quickly. If one rides much in the hot weather it is necessary to have at least three summer habits, and the more one has the smarter one’s appearance.
In London in the season, and throughout England in the summer, many women wear a white linen skirt with a dark coat or a dark cloth skirt with a white linen coat. The former of these combinations is very well suited to our climate, with its constant changes, and also to the roads which have been oiled for automobiles, as the oil ruins cloth skirts, while it can be readily washed out of the linens. The combination of a dark cloth skirt and a white linen coat looks cooler than it is and is better suited to the English climate than to ours.
For rainy or cold weather a rain coat or covert coat is very serviceable. The former may be either of the material of which the English rain coats are made or of cravenetted cloth. Very few of the tailors in this country make these rain coats, so it is usually necessary to buy an imported one.