ABSTRACT
Some women though covered up to the eyes always contrive to look indelicate; some others, decolletee as the dressmaker and a corrupt custom have made them, are in their natural innocence without reproach. A pendent jewel simply sewn to a foundation where it neither holds up nor clasps together any part of the dress, usually looks superfluous, as it is. The uncultured dress-maker, only longing for novelty, invents forms of attire that would be impossible were dress less utterly artificial than it is, and this is half the cause of our universal ill-dressing. As for shapes of dresses, a good way of testing the beauty of form is by drawing the outline of a dress, and looking at it from all points of view, and with half-closed eyes. The Turkish woman in her loose trouser, perhaps the most modest and sensible of all feminine costumes, is often held up as a type of indelicate dress.
