Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-10-27
HOMEMADE DRESSES .

HOMEMADE DRESSES.
MANY Tasteful and Becoming Toll.
cts Not Made by the Modistes.
go often hear women exclaim over
the incompetency of dressmakers, and
from personal experience have found it
80 hard to get satisfactory work done,
that I have been giving the matter some
little attention, and have decided that
the supreme art If dressmaking, OF
which expensive modistes discourse 30
learnedly, is all humbug. Given nat
ural taste which every seven women out
of ten possess, a knowledge of what is
becoming, for the lack of which no
woman should be forgiven, the time
to devote to the task, and dress
making resolves itself into pleas
ure and q success. Every woman,
be she rich or poor, knows
instinctively what is becoming to
her style better than any hired dress.
maker can do, or at least than they will
do. It is altogether too much trouble to
study each customers popularity OF
form and feature, and would entail an
amount of personal study that q fashion
able modiste has neither the time nor in
clination to acquire, and which the more
modest dressmaker is too busy doing
great part of the manual labor to con-
slider. Madame keeps all the fashion
plates, to be sure, and you may select
from them any style that you think most
suitable for your face and figure
and the material in hand. You carry
the graceful outlines of that particular
costume in your minds eye, seeing your
self, in vision, sailing down Broadway
with all eyes on that simple yet elegant
get.up. So you revel for several weeks,
and it is we'll that you do, for in all
human probability that is all the reveling
you will get out of the affair, as the
reality is far from your anticipations, the
dress no more like the model you selected
than day is like night, and the style not
at all suited to your figure. You change
your dressmaker with like result. You
20 up on Fifth avenue and pay an enor-
NOUS price; the result is the same.
All this is money we'll invested, expe-
rience dearly paid for, but of advantage
if it but teaches you one thing-to open
your eyes, look around and see if you do
not find that the most tasteful, the most
becoming, the most artistic dresses are of
home manufacture. do not mean the
carelessly made, the ill.ftting dresses
that of course we see every day. They
are the results of slovenliness and I'M
Bkillful haste. But l can point you
out dozen women any morn
ing on Broadway and Fifth
avenue, clothed in the perfection of
artistic becomingness and suitability,
whose clothes are made by their own
fair fingers; and a dozen more, whose
clothes are all designed by themselves
and made under their own personal
supervision. How many times have l
smiled to myself to hear the audible
comments made on some OF these
dresses. "That is Redfern, l know!"
or, That is one of Pingat's I'll wager any
thing!" when I knew that the dress in
question was made and designed entirely
by the fair wearer.
One woman, whose name 1 could use
with telling effect, and who gets some Of
her costumes from Paris every year,
makes the prettiest dresses that she
wears. To be sure, she has maid to
help her and to do the plain stitching,
but the draping, the designing, the fitting
she does herself. Neither does she sit
right down to it and devote day after
day to it as so many amateurs do. She
thinks out her costume, the occasion on
which she wishes to wear it, whether
street, reception, ball or carriage.
She then carefully selects her ma
terial, making sure it is suitable
for the use she designs it for. Here is
good foundation laid. The next step is
to carefully select the design, and she is
ready for work, to which she devotes an
hour or two every morning, If possible,
as her social duties are tremendous.
Sometimes she is whole month on one
dress, sometimes but week or two.
But she almost always has a dress on
the taps, in various stages of COM
pletion, and very proud she is of her sue
cess and we'll she may be, as she wears
some of the daintiest and most becoming
costumes worn among the Four Hundred.
But it is to only few of her most init
mate friends that the secret is confded.
No one ever catches her at her work.
She is always ready to receive visitors,
always bright, never tired, and always
we'll dressed. Some of her tea gowns and
morning dresses are dreams, all of them
emanatinR from that one busy brain.
In striking contrast is another woman
who wears pretty dresses and makes
them, too, but to whom the making is
actual labor; who, when she has dress
to make, shuts herself in her sewing
room, with a sewing girl to assist, and
makes sometimes three or four dresses at
a time. 1t is sorry time for the house,
hold while she is at it. assure you. She
is absorbed in dressmaking, and energies
from the sewing room in time to dress
for dinner. She does not 60 out, and, as
a consequence, the loss of her daily con-
stitutional and diversion tells on her
strength and temper, and at the end OF q
week or ten days she is CON-
pletely Frustrated, but tine happy pos
SCISSOR OF two or three new costumes.
While they are pretty and becoming,
they can't compare with those OF the
woman who takes her time and studies
the effect of each loop or fold, and whose
finishing touches are put on with such
infinite care and taste. And, oh, those
finishing TOUGHEST. How they make or
mar costume. They are the rocks on
which so many, yes, the majority, Of
home dressmakers are shipwrecked.
Hurry and haste are death to neatness
and, without neatness, no dress is fin
ished.
OF course it is to the interest of dress
makers to make great bugbear of their
work and to loudly declare-as I've often
heard them-that dressmaking has
reached such perfection of art that hone
but an artist need attempt it. And il
wa nudge by the MANY failures of these