The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-12-27
CharacterAs s Show n In
 Dress
By IMAGERY WELLS


 GO many girls are afraid of being
 different" They shun any such
 appearance as they would the plague. They dread so much to look the individual part that they manage to inject the feeling of fear into their clothes.
 Perhaps you don't know what clothes that express fear look like. Well, 1 will tell you. They become so much of a compromise that they are nonentltles. They simply don't register as anything in the least distinctive. They lose any expression of character and that Is a happening that seems too bad. For, every girl of today wants really to be characterful as well as beautiful The fact is that she has character in her makeup almost as q matter of course. Often, she is afraid to express its presence by way of her cothes-that is all.
 Now, turn over a new leaf. Let your own thoughts and your likes and dis likes come out in the designs of your dresses and hats and wraps and coats. Look each new garment square in the face, decide whether you like it or dis like it. Have some opinion in the mat tier, don't just accept something because 1t is there. Demand the thing that pleases you to the point of giving you a thrill If nothing seems to interest you to that extent, then look further. go into the matter until you find something that does rouse your attention.
 I knew a girl who always wore the most drab and brown looking clothes. Really she looked like nothing at all even when she was dressed up in her best. She came to me to know what to do because, she said, she never seemed to "cut any figure" when she went to parties, or on excursions with her frineds. At first suggested ruffles and furbelows but the very idea of those fluffy things frightened her al- most to death. She knew mstinctively that she wouldn't at all know how to carry them off. Then, put my mind to the problem with much more thought. l led her gently to a dressmaker who specialized in doing artistic things. We had it out with the dressmaker and the end was that little tan dress, the favorite brown with lights and shades let into its coloring, was the result. You know that about browns, of course. Some of them are dead and colorless while others have all the life in the world. Well, the girl didn't know that but the dressmaker did. Then, the little tan dress had rows of the bright est woolen embroidery let into it's mak- ing. It had a trim little waistcoat of lace and tucking done in cream colored way. These touches lifted it out of mediocrity into the class of character full clothes.
 I only wish you could have seen the effect of that one dress upon the erst- while indifferent owner. Her head took on a new carriage. Her whole body assumed a dignity it had never known before. Her eyes had the shine of one who is pleased with oneself and she confessed that she took on whole new interest in life, with the accompanying resolution never to let the quality and tone of her dressing sink below the ideal.
 Clothes do everything for ones spirit. And this is especially true when you have been in the lazy habit of not paying enough attention to your clothes. If you are not one of these girls, then this article is not for you But there are plenty who think too little about clothes, for a lot of wom- ans energy can be placed in no other spot, so instinctive is it for her to love to dress-to love to make herself look beautiful.
 Often a new dress is an investment. It gives you so much "pep' that you run right out and do good job or a kind deed or something that waits to be done by you. You, the American girl of the age, know so well how to make yourself expressive in other di- rections. Do it in this way, too, and see what a tremendous lot of satisfac- tion the practice will bring along with it.