The garment with the Watteau pleat is not unlike the princesse gown
which is a very trying style except to handsomely proportioned women. A
tall, well-developed woman, such as shown in sketch No. 59, adorns the
princesse gown and attains in it a statuesque beauty. In suggesting
statuary it fulfils the true ideal of dress, which should hint of
poetry, art, sculpture, painting. The massing of colors; the arrangement
of lines, the quality of textures, the grace and poise of the wearer--do
not these hint of picture, statue, music?
CHAPTER V.
CORSAGES APPROPRIATE FOR WOMEN WITH UNBEAUTIFULLY MODELLED THROATS AND
SHOULDERS.
Despite the traditional belief that a decollete corsage is a tyrannous
necessity of evening dress, a woman not graciously endowed with a
beautifully modelled throat and shoulders may, with perfect propriety,
conceal her infelicitous lines from the derisive gaze of a critical
public.
Women are indebted to that gentle genius, La Duse, for the suggestion
that a veiled throat and bust may charmingly fulfil the requirements of
evening dress, and also satisfy that sense of delicacy peculiar to some
women who have not inherited from their great-great-grandmothers the
certain knowledge that a low-necked gown is absolutely decorous.
The women who does not possess delicate personal charms commends herself
to the beauty-loving by forbearing to expose her physical deficiencies.
Unless it is because they are enslaved by custom, it is quite
incomprehensible why some women will glaringly display gaunt
proportions that signally lack the exquisite lines of firm and solid
flesh.
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