You do not look at Mile. Marie's crestfallen face, you watch the procession of models. But the old spell works. Besides zebra stripes and gold shot with cerise and purple, you think an emerald green charmeuse is really a perfect substitute for the plain black crêpe de chine you had in mind. You show that you are hypnotized by remarking absently, "It is the color of the grass."
Instantly, Mlle. Marie, the most skillful vendeuse in Paris, becomes radiant. "Listen, Madame," she says to you in that insinuating, confidential, yet humbly ingratiating manner of hers. "Let me explain, Madame,—the idea of dress this year is altogether idyllic! Never has there been such charming return to nature. The great originator of our house has taken his suggestion—but yes! from the little animals of the fields and woods—from Nature herself! Our dresses this year are intended to follow the example of all the little animals dressed to match their backgrounds. Is not that thought exquisite? Is not that delicious? Is an emerald lizard conspicuous in the tropics? Is a zebra even seen in patches of sun and shade? And in the snow, think of all the little animals who put on white coats in winter! Obviously white is the color intended for winter wear. And for the spring, green. Emerald green assuredly. It is as Madame herself said, the color of the grass. The emerald charmeuse on a lawn in summer would be a poem of harmony. The cerise for afternoons at sunset; this orange shading into coral embroidery to wear beside the fire. The dark blue chiffon embroidered in silver is for night. All the colors that Madame at first found so bright—they are but the colors of a summer flower garden. What would Madame wear in a flower garden? Black crêpe de chine? Assuredly not! See this shell pink chiffon, how lovely it would look under trees of apple blossoms. Blue serge! Oh, what an escape. And now if Madame will permit me to suggest?—the green, but assuredly! and the orange and coral, and the pink chiffon garden dress, and the zebra, for travelling, and the blue and silver...."
However, to be serious, people do go to Paris and buy their clothes—beautiful clothes! Of course they do; especially those who go every year. But the woman who goes abroad perhaps every four or five years is apt to be deficient in a trans-Atlantic sense. "Match backgrounds, like charming little animals?" Never! Oh, a very big Never Again! And yet the next time shall you not find it a temptation to go just out of curiosity to find out what the newest artfully enticing little tune of the Pied Pipers of Paris will be!
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE CLOTHES OF A GENTLEMAN
It would seem that some of our great clothing establishments, with an eye to our polyglot ancestry, have attempted to incorporate some feature of every European national costume into a "harmonious" whole, and have thus given us that abiding horror, the freak American suit. You will see it everywhere, on Broadway of every city and Main Street of every town, on the boardwalks and beaches of coast resorts, and even in remote farming villages. It comes up to hit you in the face year after year in all its amazing variations: waist-line under the arm pits, "trick" little belts, what-nots in the cuffs; trousers so narrow you fear they will burst before your eyes, pockets placed in every position, buttons clustered together in a tight little row or reduced to one. And the worst of it is, few of our younger men know any better until they go abroad and find their wardrobe a subject for jest and derision.
If you would dress like a gentleman, you must do one of two things; either study the subject of a gentleman's wardrobe until you are competent to pick out good suits from freaks and direct your misguided tailor, or, at least until your perceptions are trained, go to an English one. This latter method is the easiest, and, by all odds, the safest. It is not Anglomania but plain common sense to admit that, just as the Rue de la Paix in Paris is the fountainhead of fashions for women, Bond Street in London is the home of irreproachable clothes for men.