Parasols and umbrellas were also used by Assyrians and Greeks. Sandals which only covered the soles of the feet were the usual footwear, but Greeks and Etruscans are shown in art as wearing also moccasin-like boots and shoes laced up the front.
Of course, the strapped slippers of the Empire were a version of classic sandals.
As we have said, the Greek gown and toga are found wherever the Roman Empire reached. The women of what are now France and England clothed themselves at that time in the same manner as the cultured class of Rome. Naturally the Germanic branch which broke from the parent stem, and drifted northward to strike root in unbroken forests, bordering on untried seas, wore skins and crudely woven garments, few and strongly made, but often picturesque.
Though but slightly reminiscent of the traditional costume, we know that the women of the third and fourth centuries wore a short, one-piece garment, with large earrings, heavy metal armlets above the elbow and at wrists. The chain about the waist, from which hung a knife, for protection and domestic purposes, is descendent from the savage's cord and ancestor to that lovely bauble, the chatelaine of later days, with its attached fan, snuff-box and jewelled watch.
PLATE XX
Mrs. Condé Nast in an evening gown. Here again is a costume the beauty of which evades the dictum of fashion in the narrow sense of the term.
This picture has the distinction of a well-posed and finely executed old master and because possessing beauty of a traditional sort will continue to give pleasure long after the costume has perished.
