The Alaska citizen., 1914-08-31

:
 You have asked me what think oi the "Futurist Fashions" and by that infer that you mean the weird ideas in dress that have been prom ulEated from time 10 time recently as the kind of clothes women VIII wear in the future.
 There will never be any "FutuFist fashions in this sense. There ar" certain fixed and eternal principles of harmony 10 which such concep- tions run directly counter. And these principles of harmony in dress have been perceived by the eternal won an. and have been used by her in all stages of the worlds culture.
 To my mind harmonious dresain- is a most important factor in the harmonious adjustment of ourselves to our world II is a part. and very great part. of that effort toward perfect equilibrium that should mark the striving of every human atom in this thing We call society.
 What we call good taste is only a perception and an application of these principles of harmony wheth- CT it be good taste in dress ill manners. in furnishing the house or what not. Our minds. unless they are morbid or perverted. turn as nat urally toward happiness, joy, peace and progress as flowers turn to- ward the sun. And this only means that we. with all created things. strive to be harmonious.
 woman who is gracious, under standing. charming and delightful and a man who carries with him the masculine equivalents of these attributes are those 10 whom every thing is possible because they carry with them harmony Dress is a symbol of ones personality. the "outward banner of the mind.
 Anything that is ugly, that eNcites in persons sense of absHfdi'y, anything that shocks the aesthetic sensibilities. cannot be helpful, and anything that is not working for lasting good cannot endure. That vast engine which is the sum total of all human minds clings fast to and runs along the lines of eternal beauty and goodness. The ugly things. the wicked things cannot live. They die or they are trans muted into good.
 And so it is of dress. There have been ugly fashions. and there have been times of decadence and wick edness which was reflected in ugly and wicked fashions. But these pass. There is an eternal rhythm and harmony and a dominant line from which woman's dress can never for long stray. Its secret is sim plicity.
 In the best of our modern dresses there is nothing better or more beautiful than was in the dress of the ancient women of Greece. The fashions of the women of the Orient have been fixed for centuries, and in our lovelest modern creations we can go no further than they.
 And the reason for this is that the Greeks and the women of the Orient discovered those simple laws of harmony and having discovered them had faith in them and clung to them There is nothing new under the sun" said Solomon. The laws of harmony and of good taste in dress were fixed before woman kind was born. They are part of the law that rules the rolling of the suns in the heavens and the coloring of the tiniest flowers on earth There are no doubt monster suns born in the universe and ugly do not last. Nature herself kills them. Life is upward beau ty. harmony and joy.
 Let your dress, then, as a rule, be simple There is an infinite var iety that can be obtained in the changing of colors, in fabrics, of the adjustment and selection of em- broidery and laces. The simple line can be varied harmoniously so that there will never be an effect Of tedium or of sameness. It is really not necessary to shatter every stand ard of good taste in order to be different" 1 know of at least hundred ways in which the girdle and flowing robe of the ancient Greek maiden can be varied, and vet in not one of them will it's principles of clean harmony be vio- lated.
 do not mean by this that there is not a use for what is sometimes called the bizarre. It has it's value just as dissonance has it's value in music, but it must be sparingly used, It's purpose should be to emphasize harmony or to gather up the chord of the dress into climax. And every woman should have at least one or two perfectly gorgeous dress es to fit what I call the imperial