By Robert Scott
In the development and use of good taste in dress, you must always be progressive--always on the alert for new things, new color combinations, new lines, and always ready to make use of new ideas as they are given out.
The manufacturer, the designer of styles, the fashion authorities, all do their best to produce new and attractive ideas in style, color, and fabric, and if you would keep abreast of the times, take the new ideas that are offered and make the most of them; apply them to your needs in a way that is practical and serviceable. And here again is the necessity for a knowledge broad and flexible enough to enable one to take the sometimes seemingly impossible and successfully develop it.
When you are about to develop a new garment and you desire inspiration from prevailing style motifs, first ascertain from what this motif is derived--whether it is from an established or basic principle of design, pure in line and true in its relation to the lines of the figure, or whether it is a whimsical or erratic striving for something new and different in design without proper regard for its purpose, which is, or should be, that of clothing the human form comfortably and artistically. If the design cannot measure up to such points, there is no reason for its acceptance.
Next, determine the time and intensity of the present vogue of the style motif; that is, the period of its first appearance and the interest or popularity it has developed or is enjoying. For example, indications of the style motif come slowly, notwithstanding many opinions to the contrary. If you believe that style changes are effected overnight, you lack a proper knowledge of what constitutes style. You are confusing style with fashion.
Style is the motif, the treatment, the design, the entire ensemble, as it were, of the garment, which includes design, material, color, and workmanship; fashion is the popularity of a certain style, the common trend, the rage, as it may be called, the last term it would seem being fit when certain periods of women's dress are reflected on.
If you desire style rather than fashion, examine the newest silhouette or outline. For example, if wide, flaring skirts, natural waist-line effects, and full sleeves are at the height of popular favor, search until you find a changing tendency, which will invariably be a decrease in skirt widths, the moving of the waist line, and a changing of sleeve outlines. If, on the other hand, the narrow skirt and general appearance of slimness is the silhouette preeminent, you may rest assured that a change in the other direction is inevitable.
Fashion moves like a pendulum, and you will never be dressed in faulty style or entirely out of fashion if you anticipate, after a correct analysis of current modes, what will most surely follow.
It is to your advantage, then, not only to keep up with the prevailing fashions, but to keep as far as possible abreast of the popular mode. By this study of style and fashion, along with the proper knowledge and appreciation of your needs, it is not unreasonable to assert that you may always be dressed in good style and in fashion, for the life of every garment chosen will be materially prolonged and greater satisfaction and comfort, as well as practical economy, will most surely result.
Learn to buy materials that are good, practical, durable, and beautiful; avoid eccentricities, and choose lines that are in accord with your type of figure. Then your gown or suit will be agreeably appropriate for two years rather than for six months.
To be constantly awake to new things does not mean that everything must be adopted; it means that through your thorough knowledge of lines, color, and fabrics, you will be able to discard the bad and choose only the things that will give satisfactory results and be pleasing and serviceable.
To know dress well is to keep growing. You cannot afford to feel satisfied that you know all there is to be known about clothes. You must remember that many persons are devoting hours of earnest effort each day in bringing out the very best things in fabrics, style, and color, and that these people, as they are experts in their lines, can give you many good ideas and help you achieve your desires by aiding you in keeping you informed on the ever-changing problems of dress.
Always work for a happy medium, and never allow yourself to get into a rut regarding your clothes. It is well to keep style and color constantly in mind, never losing sight of yourself, for few are ideal in face or figure and all frequently require modified styles to bring out their charm or individual beauty.
Individual development of style is one thing that makes the clever individual's interpretation superior to ready-to-wear garments, and when consideration is given to the durability or lasting qualities of a garment that is carefully made by one who understands dress, such garments are so much superior to ready-to-wear garments that there is no comparison.
Regard dress and its correct use and development as an art, just as the musician or the painter considers his work an art. Strive to have your dresses creations--harmonious pictures.
Such dresses may be created by a combination of certain factors that produce a oneness of effect, a harmoniously pleasing result; and as you develop a garment you will be satisfied or dissatisfied with the result according to the ideal you have set for your work and to the amount of thought and effort that you have put into it.
There is always great opportunity for the woman who is willing to give plenty of study and earnest effort and thought to the designing and making of her clothes.
Many of our greatest creators of fashion in an effort to get a desired effect labor over a certain gown or suit for seemingly unreasonable lengths of time. Surrounded by yards of chiffon, silks, laces, and similar materials from which they can get inspiration, their every thought, in fact, their whole being, centers upon the creation in mind, and they gradually develop the thought, the effect they want, and with this done the details, the general construction, and the finishing of the garment itself seem of minor importance.
Beautiful dresses, those which stand out most prominently in fashion's history, are developed by the bringing together of certain fabrics and certain colors; and, in striving to get harmony out of their combinations, there are developed suitable lines that in many instances make striking creations.
Such effects are often produced during the development of a gown--nothing cut and dried about it; all inspired work is work of love, and in the creating of clothes, the inspiration must be supplemented by a knowledge of color combinations, fabric combinations, and lines.
Such garments are, as a rule, creations in every sense of the word--a work of art--for they are generally artistic and harmonious. There is life to such garments. They are usually strong in line and show evidence of development by a master hand. Only by such devotion, by a full appreciation of all the elements of garment construction, and a continual striving for the beautiful, are these creations possible.
The woman making dresses for herself must have studied dress principles enough to support her own ideals.
From what has been said you will readily see that the development of good taste in line, color, material, and suitability as to color combination of material and to style of the garment are arrived at only by diligent study of the artistic and practical relation of one to the other; then application and the determination to apply them to yourself are the mediums through which excellent results are expressed. Sustained work, conscientious study, and a pride in achievement will bring forth results that spasmodic effort never can.
You may not always be satisfied with your result, even though you have put a great amount of labor, conscientious thought, and honest effort into the production of a garment. When it is completed you will see where certain things that would improve it might have gone into the gown. Strive to have each new garment an improvement on the last by incorporating in it the good points missing in the one before.
And as you go on and develop clothes for yourself, and, as I have suggested, dress up your friends by planning in your mind what they should wear and why they should wear certain things, you will acquire not only the correct principles of dress, but the high ideals of dress--ideals that will put dress and its mission in the high position it should have in your mind.
Your consideration about dress, your correct adherence to the principles and the carrying out of your ideals, will make your friends and acquaintances take notice of you and will invariably awaken in them a desire for the right kind of clothes.
So, you see, it is an endless chain, for if you will lay the foundation for the understanding of dress, as in any other subject, you will have a following and an opportunity to do much toward helping American women to be distinctively clothed.
In the development and use of good taste in dress, you must always be progressive--always on the alert for new things, new color combinations, new lines, and always ready to make use of new ideas as they are given out.
The manufacturer, the designer of styles, the fashion authorities, all do their best to produce new and attractive ideas in style, color, and fabric, and if you would keep abreast of the times, take the new ideas that are offered and make the most of them; apply them to your needs in a way that is practical and serviceable. And here again is the necessity for a knowledge broad and flexible enough to enable one to take the sometimes seemingly impossible and successfully develop it.
When you are about to develop a new garment and you desire inspiration from prevailing style motifs, first ascertain from what this motif is derived--whether it is from an established or basic principle of design, pure in line and true in its relation to the lines of the figure, or whether it is a whimsical or erratic striving for something new and different in design without proper regard for its purpose, which is, or should be, that of clothing the human form comfortably and artistically. If the design cannot measure up to such points, there is no reason for its acceptance.
Next, determine the time and intensity of the present vogue of the style motif; that is, the period of its first appearance and the interest or popularity it has developed or is enjoying. For example, indications of the style motif come slowly, notwithstanding many opinions to the contrary. If you believe that style changes are effected overnight, you lack a proper knowledge of what constitutes style. You are confusing style with fashion.
Style is the motif, the treatment, the design, the entire ensemble, as it were, of the garment, which includes design, material, color, and workmanship; fashion is the popularity of a certain style, the common trend, the rage, as it may be called, the last term it would seem being fit when certain periods of women's dress are reflected on.
If you desire style rather than fashion, examine the newest silhouette or outline. For example, if wide, flaring skirts, natural waist-line effects, and full sleeves are at the height of popular favor, search until you find a changing tendency, which will invariably be a decrease in skirt widths, the moving of the waist line, and a changing of sleeve outlines. If, on the other hand, the narrow skirt and general appearance of slimness is the silhouette preeminent, you may rest assured that a change in the other direction is inevitable.
Fashion moves like a pendulum, and you will never be dressed in faulty style or entirely out of fashion if you anticipate, after a correct analysis of current modes, what will most surely follow.
It is to your advantage, then, not only to keep up with the prevailing fashions, but to keep as far as possible abreast of the popular mode. By this study of style and fashion, along with the proper knowledge and appreciation of your needs, it is not unreasonable to assert that you may always be dressed in good style and in fashion, for the life of every garment chosen will be materially prolonged and greater satisfaction and comfort, as well as practical economy, will most surely result.
Learn to buy materials that are good, practical, durable, and beautiful; avoid eccentricities, and choose lines that are in accord with your type of figure. Then your gown or suit will be agreeably appropriate for two years rather than for six months.
To be constantly awake to new things does not mean that everything must be adopted; it means that through your thorough knowledge of lines, color, and fabrics, you will be able to discard the bad and choose only the things that will give satisfactory results and be pleasing and serviceable.
To know dress well is to keep growing. You cannot afford to feel satisfied that you know all there is to be known about clothes. You must remember that many persons are devoting hours of earnest effort each day in bringing out the very best things in fabrics, style, and color, and that these people, as they are experts in their lines, can give you many good ideas and help you achieve your desires by aiding you in keeping you informed on the ever-changing problems of dress.
Always work for a happy medium, and never allow yourself to get into a rut regarding your clothes. It is well to keep style and color constantly in mind, never losing sight of yourself, for few are ideal in face or figure and all frequently require modified styles to bring out their charm or individual beauty.
Individual development of style is one thing that makes the clever individual's interpretation superior to ready-to-wear garments, and when consideration is given to the durability or lasting qualities of a garment that is carefully made by one who understands dress, such garments are so much superior to ready-to-wear garments that there is no comparison.
Regard dress and its correct use and development as an art, just as the musician or the painter considers his work an art. Strive to have your dresses creations--harmonious pictures.
Such dresses may be created by a combination of certain factors that produce a oneness of effect, a harmoniously pleasing result; and as you develop a garment you will be satisfied or dissatisfied with the result according to the ideal you have set for your work and to the amount of thought and effort that you have put into it.
There is always great opportunity for the woman who is willing to give plenty of study and earnest effort and thought to the designing and making of her clothes.
Many of our greatest creators of fashion in an effort to get a desired effect labor over a certain gown or suit for seemingly unreasonable lengths of time. Surrounded by yards of chiffon, silks, laces, and similar materials from which they can get inspiration, their every thought, in fact, their whole being, centers upon the creation in mind, and they gradually develop the thought, the effect they want, and with this done the details, the general construction, and the finishing of the garment itself seem of minor importance.
Beautiful dresses, those which stand out most prominently in fashion's history, are developed by the bringing together of certain fabrics and certain colors; and, in striving to get harmony out of their combinations, there are developed suitable lines that in many instances make striking creations.
Such effects are often produced during the development of a gown--nothing cut and dried about it; all inspired work is work of love, and in the creating of clothes, the inspiration must be supplemented by a knowledge of color combinations, fabric combinations, and lines.
Such garments are, as a rule, creations in every sense of the word--a work of art--for they are generally artistic and harmonious. There is life to such garments. They are usually strong in line and show evidence of development by a master hand. Only by such devotion, by a full appreciation of all the elements of garment construction, and a continual striving for the beautiful, are these creations possible.
The woman making dresses for herself must have studied dress principles enough to support her own ideals.
From what has been said you will readily see that the development of good taste in line, color, material, and suitability as to color combination of material and to style of the garment are arrived at only by diligent study of the artistic and practical relation of one to the other; then application and the determination to apply them to yourself are the mediums through which excellent results are expressed. Sustained work, conscientious study, and a pride in achievement will bring forth results that spasmodic effort never can.
You may not always be satisfied with your result, even though you have put a great amount of labor, conscientious thought, and honest effort into the production of a garment. When it is completed you will see where certain things that would improve it might have gone into the gown. Strive to have each new garment an improvement on the last by incorporating in it the good points missing in the one before.
And as you go on and develop clothes for yourself, and, as I have suggested, dress up your friends by planning in your mind what they should wear and why they should wear certain things, you will acquire not only the correct principles of dress, but the high ideals of dress--ideals that will put dress and its mission in the high position it should have in your mind.
Your consideration about dress, your correct adherence to the principles and the carrying out of your ideals, will make your friends and acquaintances take notice of you and will invariably awaken in them a desire for the right kind of clothes.
So, you see, it is an endless chain, for if you will lay the foundation for the understanding of dress, as in any other subject, you will have a following and an opportunity to do much toward helping American women to be distinctively clothed.
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