urrecting models
found in museums, and some of us recognise the lines and details of
ancient head-dresses in hats turned out by our most up-to-date
milliners.

Parasols and umbrellas were also used by Assyrians and Greeks. Sandals
which only covered the soles of the feet were the usual footwear, but
Greeks and Etruscans are shown in art as wearing also moccasin-like
boots and shoes laced up the front.

Of course, the strapped slippers of the Empire were a version of classic
sandals.

As we have said, the Greek gown and toga are found wherever the Roman
Empire reached. The women of what are now France and England clothed
themselves at that time in the same manner as the cultured class of
Rome. Naturally the Germanic branch which broke from the parent stem,
and drifted northward to strike root in unbroken forests, bordering on
untried seas, wore skins and crudely woven garments, few and strongly
made, but often picturesque.

Though but slightly reminiscent of the traditional costume, we know that
the women of the third and fourth centuries wore a short, one-piece
garment, with large earrings, heavy metal armlets above the elbow and at
wrists. The chain about the waist, from which hung a knife, for
protection and domestic purposes, is descendent from the savage's cord
and ancestor to that lovely bauble, the chatelaine of later days, with
its attached fan, snuff-box and jewelled watch.

PLATE XX

Mrs. Conde Nast in an evening gown. Here again is a costume
the beauty of which evades the dictum of fashion in the
narrow sense of the term.

This picture has the distinction of a well-posed and finely
executed old master and because possessing beauty of a
traditional sort will continue to give pleasure long after
the costume has perished.

[Illustration: _Mrs. Conde Nast in Evening Dress_]

CHAPTER XVI

DEVELOPMENT OF GOTHIC COSTUME

To the Romans, all who were not of Rome and her Empire, were
foreigners,--outsiders, people with a strange viewpoint, so they were
given a name to indicate this; they were called "barbarians."

Conspicuous among those tribes of barbarians, moved by human lust for
gain to descend upon the Roman Empire and eventually bring about its
fall, was the tribe of Goths, and in the course of centuries "Gothic"
has become a generic term, implying that which is not Roman. We speak of
Gothic architecture, Gothic art, Gothic costumes, when we mean, stri