The Man Who Pleases and the Woman Who Charms

by John A. Cone

DRESS.

"No woman is ugly who is well dressed."

Spanish Proverb.

For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

Hamlet.

I believe in dress. I believe that God delights in beautiful things, and as he has never made anything more beautiful than woman, I believe that that mode of dressing the form and face which best harmonizes with her beauty is that which pleases him best.

J. G. Holland.

As the author of this volume is a man, this chapter on dress is, of course, written from a man's point of view. He knows very well that, were he to attempt to write scientifically of woman's clothes he would be lost. No one but a woman can do that. The man who tried it would soon find himself bewildered by a maze of technical terms and expressions which seem absolutely necessary to describe exactly what is meant. Possibly, however, the author can take a broad, mental grasp of the subject apart from and above the pretty finesse with which feminine writers would treat the subject. Clothes are the woman's weapons, one of the resources of civilization, with which woman marches forth to the conquest of the masculine world, and the writer wishes to estimate from the man's standpoint just how much the silks, the laces, the ribbons and the velvets have to do in influencing the masculine heart.

What one wears is accepted as an index of one's character. Whether this is as it should be or not, yet it is true; and we all feel, more or less, that coarseness or refinement finds visible expression in apparel as in no other way. "Surely," says The Boston Journal, "nothing so intensifies the personality as the clothes one wears; through association they become a part of us, help to identify us, even in some peculiar, reactionary way, serve to control our mental states."

Many women will tell you that their most infallible cure for weariness and the blues is to go and dress up in one of their prettiest gowns. Many men will tell you that a clean shave, clean linen, and a fresh suit of clothes are most reviving and soothing in their effect upon the psychical as well as the physical man.