but far more conspicuous, are the dressed-to-the-minute
women who, like sheep exactly, follow every turn of latest fashion blindly
and without the slightest sense of distance or direction. As each new
season's fashion is defined, all the sheep run and dress themselves each
in a replica of the other, their own types and personalities have nothing
to do with the case. Fashion says: "Wear bolster cases tied at the neck
and ankle," or "A few wisps of gauze held in place with court plaster,"
and daughter, mother, grandmother, and all the neighbors wear the same. If
emerald green is the fashionable color, all of the yellowest skins will be
framed in it. When hobble skirts are the thing, the fattest wabble along,
looking for all the world like chandeliers tied up in mosquito netting. If
ball dresses are cut to the last limit of daring, the ample billows of the
fat will vie blandly with the marvels of anatomy exhibited by the thin.
Comfort, convenience, becomingness, adaptability, beauty are of no
importance. Fashion is followed to the letter--therefore they fancy, poor
sheep, they are the last word in smartness. Those whom the fashion suits
_are_ "smart," but they are seldom, if ever, distinguished, because--they
are all precisely alike.

=THE WOMAN WHO IS REALLY CHIC=

The woman who is chic is always a little different. Not different in being
behind fashion, but always slightly apart from it. "Chic" is a borrowed
adjective, but there is no English word to take the place of "elegant"
which was destroyed utterly by the reporter or practical joker who said
"elegant dresses," and yet there is no synonym that will express the
individuality of beautiful taste combined with personal dignity and grace
which gives to a perfect costume an inimitable air of distinction. _Une
dame elegante_ is all of that! And Mrs. Oldname is just such a person. She
follows fashion merely so far as is absolutely necessary. She gets the
latest model perhaps, but has it adapted to her own type, so that she has
just that distinction of appearance that the sheep lack. She has even
clung with slight modifications to the "Worth" ball dress, and her
"wrapped" or fitted bodice has continued to look the smartest in every
ballroom in spite of the Greek drapery and one-piece meal bag and all the
other kaleidoscopic changes of fashion the rest of us have been through.

But the average would-be independent who determines to stand her ground,
saying, "These new mod