Morning journal and courier., 1880-10-25
Worth, The Dress Dictator.

l Visit to the Sanctunl of the High Priest OfFeminine Fashions.
 From Correspondence of the New York Worldly Nearly all the fabrics used in the dresses made by Mir. Worth are manufactured from designs of his own, for he is great inventor 1 and even at his dinner table sheet of paper | is often at his side and on it he draws designs | for some new costume destined to captivate | the male sex and fill the other sex with envy. ! Dress with MT. Worth is a fine art, worthy of calling into exercise the highest human | faculties It was he who invented those f wonderful chamois under garments which are ! supposed to add so much to the already ir- resistible attractions of the nobIer part of creation. He knows everybody and seems to be an acute judge of character. Of one lady he said: ''She looks as if she wished to be always slipping poison and to administer large doses to her friends" When some one else was mentioned, he remarked, ''She is so much done up in her own currant jelly that 1t Is quite hopeless to approach her." Not that his sayings were always in this caustic vein-he has his favorites, and among them are the American ladies' many of whom are
 his best customers. They possess the requisite figures to enable him to do justice to his art. For them he exerts all his talents. He has
 made himself acquainted with the history and
 belongings of most of the best-known New York familles-perhaps matter of caution, for Mir. Worth like our old friend DOg6e1Ty,
 
 who so-and-so was before her marriage, and
 whether her father left her any money and how much her husband has got. All this
 sort of information IS doubtless useful to a
 man of business whose bills can but be a
 tri1e long, for excellence in any field of life
 has to be paid for. The great English clothes
 maker for men is not cheap, and yet in mans
 attire there IS room for the play of fancy and the, exercise of ingenuity. The great
 and critical point of trimming never has to
 be decided And it is on this point that Mr.
 Worth is so great an authority. One of the friends whom I accompanied had a magnif- cent Indian shawl which she wished convert
 ed into mantle. It was beautiful shawl,
 the finest I ever saw, and it cost originally
 about $1 ,5OO (e3OO). The shape of the
 mantle having been decided, there came to
 the front the momentous question of trim
 ming-in this case merely trimming for the
 edge. One or two suggestions were made,
 but after few moments reflection the
 celebrated artist came out with idea which
 was at once admitted to be the best that could possibly be presented, even if all the dressmakers in the world were assembled in solemn conference on the question. One point only astonished me in the learned dis
 quisltion pronounced by Professor Worth. There in this Indian shawl some very fine touches of green of that particular shade which cannot be produced out of the Vale of Cashmere. In an Indian house which I once
 visited the door of every room was composed
 solely of grand shawl presented by the
 Maharajah of Cashmere and each shawl was selected the finest example of the work mems skill The green in those shawls was of lovely shade, beautifully blended with other colors, and in the shawl placed before Mr. Worth there was the same rich tint here and there. The remark which he made and which took me so completely aback was simply this Madame, we must suppress the green" Suppress the greenl Oh, Mir. Worth! Surely that was a conception which owed it's orgin to the assassinating weather and which thy excellent judgment would repudiate in cooler moments.
 The French are supposed to be the great est devisers of dress and ornament in the world, but Mir. Worth has gone into their own stronghold and beaten them. He is, as everybody knows, an Englishman, and long held position in the house of Swann & Edgar in London, where his peculiar abilities soon marked him out for promotion. He is now French citizen and has two sons who look more French than English, and who have served or are serving their prescribed term in the army. The Parisian nodSstes no longer contest MT. Worth's superiority. They adopt the simpler and easier cost of following meek ly in his footsteps. At the beginning of each season they buy dress of MT. Worth's and use 1t as model, tracing inch by inch its cut and fashion. Thus an Englishman is at the top of the tree in Paris, and it would be hard Ii he had climbed all the way there without getting any fruit. In a word, MT. Worth is rich, influential and respected-a celebrity" in his way, in many respects characteristic of the times in which he lives. It IS pity that he cannot apply his gifts to the adornment of both sexes, but since he had to choose one there is no denying that he made his selection wisely. ''I admire your skill so much,'' said I. that I am sorry I cannot ask you to make something for me by way Of preserving memorial of it." '1 only wish, replied MT. Worth, 'that could make only pair of trousers for myself" and he looked ruefully down at his neither garments which, to say the truth, would have sent thrill of horror through Poole's es- tablishment