should not object to spending a
good part of her time indoors. She should have a certain amount of taste
and some ingenuity in carrying out her own ideas or the ideas of others.
Manual skill, originality, and artistic ability are required by the
successful dressmaker. The girl who means to make dresses for others,
should, herself, dress quietly and in good taste.

If the girl is able to continue at school and has a natural gift for
dressmaking, the best way for her to learn her trade is to spend some
years at a technical school. Here she will be taught sewing in all its
phases--fitting, finishing, designing, the choice and use of materials,
and the business details of dressmaking. The dressmaker cannot learn her
trade once for all and go on repeating operations which do not require
originality. Styles change, and season by season she will have to adapt
and carry out alterations in fashion which will tax all her ability.
If she cannot give more than two years to learning her trade in school,
she is still at a great advantage when she enters a dressmaking
establishment. She will understand all the different processes and will
be able to work in the various sections, thus gaining far more rapidly
in experience than if she had had everything to learn from the beginning.
Actual trade experience will teach her a great deal. If, however, she is
obliged to leave school at fourteen, she should at least have had the
advantage of the instruction in sewing which is given in the public
schools. It is probable that she may be obliged, when she enters a
dressmaking establishment, to act as a messenger girl. She should make
sure, however, that she is not used for running messages only. It would be
better for her to accept less pay, with the understanding that she is to
be taught the details of dressmaking, than to earn more money and have no
opportunity to learn. The more she tries to understand and imitate the work
of experienced dressmakers, the better will be her training. The custom of
having apprentices has fallen rather into disuse, and the girl will find
the learning of her trade left largely to her own initiative. As soon as
she begins to have some skill in the operations of the workroom, she should
attend evening classes in sewing, fitting, finishing, and designing. She
should wait, however, until she is sixteen or seventeen before she attends
these classes. While she is learning from other dressmakers, she will have
sufficient