BEAUTY IN DRESS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3052, 7 April 1881, Page 4

BEAUTY IN DRESS.

Mrs Hawois, in a volume entitled " The Art of Beauty," makes the following points ■with regard to beauty in dress • — " The reason that an ordinary low neclc with short sleeves looks worse in black than in any other colour is because the hard line round the bust and arms is too great a contrast to the skin. A low neck always lessens the height, and a dark dress made thus lessens it still more, and it strikes theartistic eye as cutting the body in pieces in this "way : if you see a fair person dressed in a low dark dress standing against a light backgronnd some way off, the efiect will be that of an empty dress hung up, the face, neck, and arms being scarcely discernible. On the other hand, against a dark background the head and bust will bo thrown up sharply, and the whole dress and body will disappear. This effect, common enough, is execrably bad. If you must wear a low black bodice, let it be cut square, giving the height of the shoulders (or, better, with the angles rounded, for corners are very trying), and have plenty of white or pale gauze or thin black net to soften tho harah line between the skin and the dress. White gauze or lace softens down the blackness of the dress at the edge of the bodice, and thin black stuff has an equally good effect, as it shades the whiteness of the skin into the bark colour of the gown. Only under these conditions does the sudden contrast enhance, as some persons suppose, the fairness of the complexion. " Short woman should never wear double skirts or tunics—they decrease the height so much—unless, indeed, the tunic is very short and tbeskirt very long. So also do large, sprawling patterns used for trimmings : let these be left to women tall enough to carry them off. Neither let a very little woman wear her hair half down her back j let her lift it clean up as high as '' possible. " Large feet should never be cased in kid —lea.it of all white kid slippers —for lad reveals so clearly the form find movements of the feefc, and stretches no easily that few feet have a chance in them " Those who are very stout should wear nothing but black ; those who are very t'!>7> ,»)■ ••1 -! :>'■♦ ■> : 'fl.. p- 1 Hip; ;•> f l u?fr

gowns ; and neither should be in the lenet decollette. Perpendicular stripes in dresses give height and increase fullness, and are therefore particularly suitable for very slight small people, and particularly unfitted for stout figures."