If it is trimmed with lace, that would take as much
of your salary as the coal for all winter would come to. If trimmed
with ribbons, they must be changed often to freshen the gown, whose
only beauty is its freshness. Deliver me from a soiled or stringy
white party-dress! If it can be worn five times during the winter, the
girl is either a careful dancer or else a wallflower. In either case,
after every wearing she must have it pressed out and put away as
daintily as if it were egg-shells, all of which is the greatest
nuisance on earth. Often such a gown is torn all to pieces the first
time it is worn. Scores of "simple white muslin" ball-gowns at a
hundred dollars apiece are only worn once or twice.
Now take the "extravagant" girl with her flowered taffeta silk, or
plain satin, or brocade dress. There is at once the effect of richness
and elegance. No matter how sweet and pretty she is, you at once
decide that you never could afford to dress her. But that taffeta
cost, perhaps, only a dollar a yard. The satin, possibly a dollar and
a half. They require almost no trimming, because the material is so
handsome and the effect must be as simple as possible. Such a gown
never need be lined with silk unless you wish to do it. Many a girl
gets up such a gown for fifty or sixty dollars.
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