of the age enables us to pick and choose from any source we like. I have great hopes of the future of female costume (male costume seems, from the artistic side, to be past praying for), but a great deal depends upon the artists. The average man is as bad as the average woman; he likes pretty little waists and neat little feet quite as much as the recipient of his misplaced admiration. Indeed, as I think it is incontestable that women dress more to please men than to please themselves, we men are probably more to blame than the women for the vagaries of female costume. But the artists have, or ought to have, a better taste in these matters than the outside public. They all affect to admire the masterpieces of classical art, and they are, few of them, entirely ignorant of what the human form ought to be. It is to them that we must look for protests against its disfigurement.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
John Collier.
Fig 6.
Mr. G. H. Boughton, A.R.A.
West House,
Campden Hill-road, W.
Dear Sir,—The questions you send me regarding my opinion of the present style of ladies' dress cover too large and varied a field to be disposed of in a moment—that is, if one could dispose of them even after many and many a month, let alone moments. The one virtue of the women's dress of to-day is its variety and individuality. Those who are really dressed and not merely clothed, have their dresses "created" for them, and they belong to each other. The fair and the dark, the lean and the reverse, do not now bedeck themselves with the same all pervading tint or cut, whether it suits them well or ill, just because it is "all the go." Even the almost universal cut of to-day is usually graceful and of quiet tone. And somehow most girls seem to be of taller growth, and of better health and colour, and to walk better than ever before. The adoption of bits of bygone fashions is now and then deplorable. One sees queer jumbles of Marie Stuart ruffs and "Empire" bonnets, or of any other period except of the Marie Stuart head-gear. Suppose a poor simple masher of the male kind should try some historical head-gear—say a cocked hat or a Charles II. with a wreath of feathers and lace—and mount a jewelled sword, as a new incident to his usual Piccadilly attire? It would be in no worse taste than the various mixture of "periods" that some of the dear creatures of to-day startle the student of costume
