Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-05-21
GOWNS OF BLUE SILK,
PINK TULLE AND ROSES
BY ANNE RITTENHoUSE.

Special Correspondence Of The Star.
NEW YORK, May live are getting
far more Louis XIV than Louis Philippe.
There has been a curious and unpleasant
comminglng of the two possibly because
the names are SO nearly alike, and the
two epochs have been COMPOUNDED by
dressmakers, who certainly know better,
but who were evidently experimenting.
The styles of Louis XIV are decidedly
alluring. although they are intended for
the evening and do not satisfy the de-
mands of the daytime. The styles Of
Louis Philippe are rarely attractive, and
easily slip into awkwardness and positive
ugliness.
If the American woman would make up
her mind to be entirely American on the
street and Louis XIV in the evening. the
choice would be wise and would be salts
flying to the eye. There is no one style
of dress that has ever been invented that
is so suitable to the character, environ
ment and activities of the American
woman as her own tailored suit. In it
she looks her best and is at her best. Her
taiIors top the world in the making of
it, and if she determined to cling to it
in its varying phases she would consist
emily command the admiration of all the
best dressed people in the world.
American Tailored Suits.
The French constantly deplore the fact
that the American woman does not ex-
plot to the uppermost and hold as her
own a suit which she started and which
she adorns. The best French designers
will tell you that they cannot maze
tailored suits to equal those of the Ameri-
can tailor. and, although one admits that
tlA rtyIio oh md Gkt RI
times of better cloth and better sewn
and certainly far less in price than the
American ones, STILL they do not have
the fiexibility of ours. The English rarely
alter the cut of the coat or the skirt.
The American tailor can follow any fash
ion that is set and yet keep his suit
mannish and serviceable
If women only listened to men in their
choice OF clothes they would always be
tailored on the street and in public
places in the afternoon. There is no
uniform in which they appear that SO
peases the masculine eye, but the trouble
is that the American woman yields to
the vaearies of fashions that are set
for the Frenchwoman, and very often,
and in great mass, loses her identity.
She looks her best in the evening in
oriental clothes Or those of the Louis XIV
and colonial eras. She should skip all
the fashions of the nineteenth century,
for not one decade in that time gave her
fascinating evening apparel; it is since
the twentieth century began tnat She
has brilliantly blossomed out under the
electric lights. She is not done with
orientalism yet, and there is evidence
that she is coming back into the medi
evaI splendor of Louis XI. but just at
the present moment the best of the fash
ions offered her for the evening are mod-
fed Louis XIV.
In the choice between orientalism and
the gowns of Louis Quinze the individual
must WELD her own judgment. There are
certain types of women who wear both
styles of dress with equal brilliancy, but
II must be admitted that the coiffeurs
are right when they say that we should
powder our hair in the evening and put
a puff and curl to its fiat surface
when we adopt the blue and pink lace
and roses and the scarlet lips and bla ok
patch under the eye of the women Of
Louis XV's reign. The red lips and the
black patch we have added to all our
costumes for the last three years We
have not yet come to the powdered hair.
but it is possible that we will before
September
Garlapded With RoSaS