Evening star., 1925-10-25
BY MARY MARSHALL

~ PEN your book of synonyms
To the words that mean gor
Geous and sparkling bril-
~ liant, dazzling, magnificent,
reSplendent and sCintillating.
These words ought to give you an inn
preston of the new evening frocks. AT
any rate they are the words most Of
ten used in describing them. Puritanic
simplicity and Quakerish occurrences
are 40 longer admired traits of eve
ming gowns. If your needs must find
n period of dress history comparab BILE
10 the present as regards the gor
EeousneSS of materials used, you
would have To go back to the days of
Babylonian splendor. the decadence of
Rome, the late Italian Renaissance
or the period of La Pompadour and
Louis Nv III France
OF one thing you may he sure, you
can no longer attract attention in an
evening assemblaGe by wearing cloth
a. lace of gold or silver, fabrics
weighted down with metallic embroid-
cry and beading, brocades rich with
metallic incrustationS. These gor
geouS materials aco taken for grant
ed with evening C0hes this season.
Not very long asS we used to speak
of a certain ciAFx OF evening gowns
as being sophisticated" Now there
seem TO bo no other sort. As soon
as girls are old enough to wear eve
ming gowns at all they wear the
sophisticated sort and the only thing
that any woman can now do to at
tract surprised attention is TO wear an
evening gown that is very simple and
free from all glitter and gorgeous
ness.
Undoubtedly the habit of wearing
conventional evening dress among
women in this country is on the in
crease. our European neiehbors
would probably see in this only d
natural tendency to become more and
more civilized. With the English
woman even more than with the
French woman it Is matter of sec
ond nature to slip out of day clothes
into d frock with conventional low
neck and short sleeves at some con-
venient time before dinner. With
many Americans such a custom has
often been regarded as pertaining only
10 the very rich or the very dis
tinguished. It would he easy to estab-
lish the fact quite plainly from the
figures of sales of ready-made eve
ming frocks that the custom of wear
ing evening dress is steadily increas-
ing throughout the length and breadth
of the land.
Doubtless American men, often un-
DER feminine dureSS. no doubt, are
improving in the matter of wearing
evening clothes. But there is an
interesting counter action. 1t is, you
know, considered quite swagger by
the very modern young Englishman
10 look with a sort of disrespect on
the conventional male evening cos
tume-With a sort of diSreSpeCt quite
shocking to the elder English gentle
man, who looks upon the black broad
cloth evening coat with as much ven
eration as he does upon Westmin
ster Abbey or the House of Lords
uncomfortable as he has doubtless ad-
nitted this prescribed evening COS
tune to be, he has never felt the
slightest desire to change the fashion
in any particular whatever. In fact,
1t has never occurred to him that it
could be changed in any essential.
And, of course, there are many Ameri-
can men who have much the same at
titude toward the clothes that custom
has given them for evening.
To be sure, in the course of five or
six years, slight changes creep in
And in twice that length Of time eve
ming suits may become positively
paSsee. But they continue to be black
and they continue to be broadcloth.
Always there is much the same COM
bination of black and white about
them. 1t does in truth seem as if the
men of the Occident had gone into