£l0,000 FOR A DRESS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2116, 15 February 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

£lo,ooo FOR A DRESS.

SILK THAT COST £25 A YARD

The most wonderful, costly, and magnificent garment in the world is the Queen of Siam’s Stato mantle, which she wears only about once a year Indeed, she must bo rather glad that site lias not to wear it offcener, for it so heavy that it is a pain rather than a pleasure to put it on. It is literally covered with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires—in fact, with almost every known precious stono—and is as thickly powdered with jewels as the Milky Way is powdered with stars. If it were possible for it to come into the market it would probably fetch something in the neighborhood of £1,000,000 sterling. One of the two sisters of the Czar, the wife of the- Grand Duke Alexander Miclmelovitch, runs the Queen of Siam very close for the possession of the costliest dress in the world, for she possesses a magnificent example of the Russian national costume, perfect iu every detail, but absolutely studded with gems. It consists of a bodice and skirt, over which is hung a hood and cape, the whole surmounted by a sort of half-moon-shaped head-dress, something like the hat made familiar to the world in pictures of the groat Napoleon. This wonderful dress is worth a king’s ransom, the head-dress, bodice, and cape being one mass of beautiful and costly jeivels. Actresses frequently wear dresses which represent, a fortune. The “divine Sarah,” for instance, has the luxurious tastes of an Eastern empress. Her dresses commonly cost LI,OOO each. Airs Langtry, too, usually changes her dress half-a-dozen times in the course of one evening on the stage, and her display of jewels, lace, and silks probably represents £IO,OOO. Rejane is alsft noted for her magnificent and costly stago dresses; and it is said that while appearing in “Traviata” at Covent Garden Alnte. Alelba wears jewellery to the value of a quarter of a million sterling. No wonder she employs a private detective to look after it. The wives of American millionaires are often more profuse than actresses in the amount they spend on their personal .adornment. Airis Alackiie, for instance, paid £IO,OOO for a dress embroidered with pearls, whilo the wife of another millionaire in the metropolis of pork has in her wardrobe a perfectly wonderful costume. The groundwork is heavy duehesso satin of cerulean blue, with a Court train two and a half yards long, also lined with heavy satin. Two great shawls of Brussels point lace, a yard wide and three yards in length, kept in place by “diamond sunbursts and adorned with pendants of the same jewel,” adorn the sides and front of the skirt. Too laco alone is worth £5,000, or more than 200 times its weight in gold, and the whole dress is valued at £1.0,000. Russian millionaires are not vory plentiful; but tbo wife of one of them has a long mantle of the fur of tho silver fox, which is of such value that its cost would not be represented if its whole surface were covered with golden sovereigns. Indeed, the necklet alone is said to have cost her husband 000 guineas. Apropos of furs, it is said that the widow of Li Hung Chang, tho deceased Chinese, statesman and millionaire, has in her wardrobe 500 fur robes of fabulous value, the prepared skins of all the rarest fur-bearing animals in the world. Tho best-dressed woman in Europe is the German Empress. Slio seldom wears silks or satins costing less than £lO a yard. She wears a Court dress once, or, if it be of extremely great value, twice, 'but all the trimmings and decorations must bo entirely changed before she wears it a second time ' A few years ago she indulged in a length of Lyons silk, snow-white and adorned with flowers, birds, and foliage in relief. She intended it for a dress, but changed her mind and used it for a curtain. The price for this costly fabric was actually £25 a yard! Her husband is not far behind her, for the Kaiser is said to have over 1,000 different .suits of clothes and SOO pairs of trousers, and ho could certainly wear a different uniform for every day in the year, Sundays included. ' It is well known, indeed, that 110 changes his uniform half-a-dozen times a day for various functions and ceremonies, although 110 will wear the same suit several times in all. There is a certain Royal personage, however, in the confines of the German Empire, who beats his Sovereign hollow, for lie attires liim;c!f in a brand new suit every day in flic year and runs up a tailor’s bill amounting to many thousands of rounds per .annum. He nnnoiuts his 365 vearly suits with attar of roses it- £5 an ounce. He wears at least Mi rep neckties a day, or upwards of 1.000 in the course of a year, and uses upwards of 200 pairs of boots and shoes in the same period.