PURSES, FANS AND OTHER ACCESSORIES
Pocketbooks and purse bags must be slender, never round or bulky looking, and must always harmonize with the dress and never be conspicuously colored. Remember too, not to let your bag dangle awkwardly from your hand or add to your width by the way you carry it. Let it be a part of the line of your costume just as it is in harmony with the color.
Graceful fans of subdued colors often aid in a pleasing gracefulness, but little fans allow of an uncomplimentary comparison, just as do small, gay parasols.
Fat fingers are shortened and made more fat by heavy rings.
Earrings widen the face. Sometimes a slender face accompanies a broad body. In such a case, earrings are an advantage if they are appropriate and graceful.
Jeweled belts, conspicuous in ornamentation, must all be given away to willowy friends, because they could prove helpful to them and a menace to you.
NEATNESS AND CLEANLINESS ARE ESSENTIAL
Once when I was writing a book on dress, a fashion authority and personal friend insisted that I should not put in a chapter on cleanliness, which I wanted very much to use, saying that it “put an ugly frame on an otherwise beautiful picture.” But personal cleanliness and careful grooming to my mind are so necessary that no book on dress would be complete without them.
We may not have beautiful clothes, and may grieve that we are not willowy enough to wear the smart extremes in dress, but our grieving is totally unnecessary. We can learn truly to be as attractive, as admirable as our slender sisters if we set out with the will and determination to express perfection so far as our ability and intelligence will allow. A fresh bath, some bath talcum, clean, well-fitting underthings, neat, good-looking shoes, and modest stockings can give an enhancing foundation for the dress we have so carefully planned. And when we are spic and span from the inside out we are sure to dress with more dignity, more poise, than we possibly could otherwise.