EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS
1. Why do you think Miss Willing had "good taste" in dress?
2. What can you tell about Miss Willing's talk on artistic appreciation? What does it mean in relation to dress?
3. Criticize your own garments in relation to line, simplicity, decoration, appropriateness.
Lesson 2
THE CHOICE OF COLORS FOR CLOTHING
Color is important in choosing or making our clothes. We too must learn if we would choose as wisely as the Pleasant Valley girls.
Miss James thinks that the Pleasant Valley girls have learned so much about color in relation to general design in their art classes that they will be able to understand easily about color in dress too. Colors, they have learned, have value, with gradations from light to dark. In black and white the contrast is striking, but when values are closer together the harmony is closer and less conspicuous.
In choosing your new spring dress be sure to think of your own characteristics. Your appearance may be injured or improved according to the color chosen. Color even more than design may spoil the appearance, and is important to the wearer and to all who come in contact with her, for color is expression of one's refinement and culture. Every girl of Pleasant Valley will wish to know how to look her best. Color in which there has been mixed much gray, as dull blue or dull red rather than pure bright color, is apt to make the individual characteristics stand out. This grayness in color forms a background as it were, or a setting, for the face and shows the figure to best advantage.
Fig. 134.—Can you find the middle values of gray?