1930—Paris Frocks at Home
Lesson III—Let Fabrics Work Their Magic
Fabrics can make you or break you.
Selection of the material for your own particular costume requires much more finesse than you may have realized. Knowing what you like or what is in fashion is not a complete guide. Does the fabric like you as well? Does it "look like you"—that is, like your personality?
Give yourself and the pattern you have selected the best possible break. Do not buy anything but a good quality of material. Bargains in silks and woolens are seldom real bargains except under very unusual market conditions. The tired looking dress makes one feel weary. It is no wonder some dresses get looking tired so soon when one considers how little real strength the material had when it was born. A trip to the cleaner's usually saps whatever deceptive vitality the fabric had when you saw it on the counter. No, do not economize that way.
Don't skimp on quantity.
And another timely warning, do not buy too little material. The remnant counter may help you out occasionally but usually it raises false hopes. The pattern envelope tells you exactly the amount of material to buy for average heights. If you happen to be six feet, two inches, then you had better buy additional quantity to cover your length.
Materials can't be skimped or stretched to reach. Sleeves have been known to slip right out at the shoulder blade where seams were cut too narrow and backs were skimped to accommodate the limitations of too little fabric to really cut the dress.
The pattern envelope is a shopping guide.
Many of us buy our pattern before we buy the fabric. In general that is a very good habit. For, voila, not only does the pattern envelope tell us how much fabric to buy, but what fabrics are especially good for each design.
Tailored effects seldom look well in chiffons. By the same token, woolens, even the medium weight ones, should not be used for billowy fluttery designs. Stiff taffetas that gather delightfully into puffs just cannot be draped. Take the advice of your pattern envelope with respect to matters of this sort.
Luxurious, decorative materials like velvets and metals are themselves sufficiently interesting to be made up in the simplest fashion. Whatever happens, don't look dressed up in your grandest clothes.
Breaking into print.
Prints should be made from a pattern of few pieces and simple cut, Avoid the bother of matching leaves and stems by choosing a design with few pieces to put together. If you feel a little amateurish at first with your dressmaking, use some jolly little all-over print fabric. Any slight mistakes will be completely hidden from the most critical eye. Plain fabrics are not so kind to the new but enthusiastic dressmaker.
The present fashion indicates some intricacy of seaming for the plain flat crepe, canton or crepe roma dress. Satins require some delicacy of touch. If you have a sure touch and like to take pains, by all means make yourself some stunning clothes in these fabrics. There is an elegance emanating from the folds and gleaming surfaces of the satin gown which we all want to radiate, that is, provided we are not endowed with too many curves. The heavy set woman wears her satins dull if she wears them at all.
Who has not been puzzled when buying prints? It's a desperate feeling to see counters filled with bolt after bolt of prints—and they all look so alluring. Remember the material will fall in folds in your dress, its flatness will disappear—and it is the effect of the fabric held against you which matters rather than the delightful little lines in the detail of the design. Don't think for a minute that the print draped over the burly shoulder of the super-salesman will look the same draped over your own ladylike proportions. So carry your prospective purchase to a mirror and really see effects against yourself, and in relation to your own coloring and even your facial expression. The large colorful print may be for you but consider it carefully. It is more important to you that your personality subtly expresses itself, than that the world should know you are wearing a new print gown. Small jewel-like prints have a tendency to make the body recede from the dress in flattering fashion.
Transparent, fluffy dresses made over well fitted slips give a sensation of three dimensions which helps create this illusion. And by the way, a built-up line at the top of such a slip is much more flattering to a person with heavy shoulders and bust than the straight across variety.
What of this newly discovered ensemble?
As a matter of fact we have always dressed in ensembles if we were well dressed people, but we didn't have a name for it. We used to call it "good taste in dress." Our stores gave us little help in assembling our effects. We had to make our own discoveries in chic. Now they are merchandised with the express purpose of coordinating everything we wear so that we may present a harmonious whole as we step out. We may now really indulge our fancy for combining fabrics and colors, for the stores have the merchandise if we will but use care and discrimination in our selections.
In general, bright startling colors may rob us of our own color and extinguish us. So if you have a special hankering for a Chinese red dress, just control yourself on the hat and be satisfied with a dark or light hat with some small touch of your favorite red deftly introduced as a harmonious note. Save the red beads for something else and wear a string of pearls or omit decorations altogether.
Gloves and stockings, shoes and bags—shall they match each other, the dress, the coat, or what? Whatever we say on that point may have to be unsaid six weeks from now. In general, some subtle relationship should exist between hose and gloves. Shoes and bags, for the present at least, should bear a color relationship if not always a texture relationship.
To restate our original thesis, an ensemble is a complete costume in good taste, with that suavely casual appearance that is the result of careful weighing of effects.
Let us not look too precisely dressed.
