To choose daytime clothes that go with the same hats, shoes, parasols, wrist-bags, and gloves, is equally important. A snuff-colored dress and a gray one need entirely different accessories. Russet shoes, chamois gloves, and sand-colored hat go also with henna, raspberry, reds, etc.; but gray must have gray or white shoes, gloves, and hat, which also go with blues, greens and violets.
Don't Get Too Many Clothes
Choose the clothes which you must have, carefully, and if you must cut down, cut down on elaborate ones. There is scarcely anywhere that you can not, fittingly go in plain clothes. Very few, if any, people need fancy things; all people need plain ones.
A very beautiful Chicago woman who is always perfectly dressed for every occasion, worked out the cost of her own clothes this way: On a sheet of paper, thumb-tacked on the inside of her closet door, she put a complete typewritten list of her dresses and hats, and the cost of each. Every time she put on a dress she made a pencil mark. By and by when a dress was discarded, she divided the cost of it by the number of times it had been worn. In this way she found out accurately which were her cheapest and which her most expensive clothes. When getting new ones she has the advantage of very valuable information, since she avoids the dress that is never put on, which is a bigger handicap for the medium-sized allowance than many women realize.
Restaurant dress depends upon the restaurant and the city. Because women in New York wear low-necked dresses and no hats, does not mean that those who live in New Town should do the same, if it is not New Town's custom. But you must never wear an evening dress and a hat! And never wear a day dress without one. If in the city where you live, people wear day clothes in the evening, you can only very slightly differ from them.
It is never good form to be elaborately dressed in a public place, except in a box at the opera or at a charity ball.
At A Wedding, A Garden Party Or Afternoon Tea
These are the occasions when elaborate day dresses are appropriate. But if you have very few clothes, you can perfectly well wear any sort of day dress that may be in fashion. A coat and skirt is not appropriate, since a skirt and shirt-waist is and always has been a utility combination. Unless, of course, the waist is of a color to match the skirt so that it has the appearance of a dress.
You need, however, seldom worry about your appearance because you are not as "dressed" as the others; the time to worry is when you are more dressed than any one else.