WHAT PEER MARY SPENDS ON CLOTHES

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 February 1913, Page 2

WHAT PEER MARY SPENDS ON CLOTHES

Many of our lady readers will be interested to read Lite Following article, said to be written by a retired member of the English Royal Household, which is culled from an American contemporary. Some of the things that our Yankee friends ask ns to believe about English loyalty and our aristocracy are extraordinary. The writer Queen Alary is not so liberal a customer to tiie modistes and milliners who have the honour of Royal patronage as was Queen Alexandra. As Princess of AA'ales her expenditure on dress was extremely low. She and her husband did not entertain upon a large scale, but lived comparatively quietly. Hence her orders to her modistes and milliners were neither lavish nor frequent. Though she spends much more on dress now than she did as Princess of AA'ales, site still spends.less than the consort of any other great European Sovereign. The principles of strict economy instilled into her by her mother are not easily forgotten. It is not that she is not always attired as becomes a queen, but she makes her dresses last longer than her modistes like. Aloreovcr, she does not leave the scrutiny of her bills to others. She goes through them all with her chief dresser, Airs C , who is 1 a well-trained modiste, and thoroughly familiar with the profits of the great dressmakers. The result is that the overcharges which formerly made the Royal custom so profitable have become things of the past. Queen Alary buys between forty and fifty gowns in a year. For her morninggowns she seldom pays more than £2o. Her evening-gowns rarely cost more than £4O. She wears a morning-gown frequently a couple of cloz.en times before it is put out of the wardrobes, and an evening gown about a dozen times. There are

ladies of the Royal Household who iic.cr wear an evening-gon n more than- three times, and frequently but once. The Queen owes it to her exceedingly clever chief dresser that she is able to make her gowns last so long. Airs C can alter a gown so deftly that it will look like a new creation. Queen Alary’s expenditure on gowns alone rarely exceeds £BOO in the year. This, lam certain, is less by at least £2OO than the -sum annually spent on dresses by, say, the Queen of Spain, the German Empress, or the Czarina. Queen Alary is fond of serge tailor-made walking-dresses, and scarcely ever wears any other sort of costume when she is at York Cottage or Balmoral. For these dresses she pays but £7. A tailor who sent in a bill for two walking costumes, one of blue serge and the other of Scotch tweed, charged at £9 each, was promptly paid, but lie lost the Royal custom. A shot foulard gown costs £l2. A zephyr gown, tunic style, lace collar and cuffs, £lO. Silk crcpon embroideered with guipure to match ; transparent vest of ninon, lined throughout with best silk, £l3. Gown made in crevette coloured crcpon. draped over gold tissue (top of corsage finished with some of Her Alajesty’s own ok! Irish lace), £27. '■ One point worth noting about the Queen’s taste is that she never wears any material that is in the least “muddy” in colour, such, for example, as many shades of red and yellow. Any material worn by her is always “clean" in colour, in the trade sense of the word. On hats she spends less than £2OO a year. 1 believe she dots not buy more than half-a-dozen really expensive hats in the year. These may cost from £lO to £l7 each. She has paid £2O for a hat, hut not often. Open tagal is a very favourite materia! for her hats. She recently bought half-a-dozen hats of open tagal, differently trimmed, for which she paid £6 each. She keeps two dozen hats in regular wear and buys about the same number in the year. Her expenditure on boots and shoes runs to about £6O. She keeps a couple a dozen pairs of day boots and shoes and a dozen pairs of evening shoes in regular wear, and buys about a dozen pairs of the former and half-a-dozen of the latter in the course of a year. For the latter j she pays £5 a pair. The Queeon’s favourite is a Louis XV heeled patent leather] shoe, the price of which is £2 ICs. Buck i skin shoes she also favours. For those Her Alajesty pays £2 a pair. On her lingerie her expenditure is small, for the simple reason that she possesses a superlatively magnificent collection of lace, linen and silk underwear, which formed part of her wedding trousseau. The Queen’s underwear fills three large linen chests at Buckingham Palace, and £SOOO would he a fairly accurate estimate of its value. On furs Queen Alary has also had little occasion to spend much money since King George’s accession. On the occasion of the Coronation site received as gifts a large quantity of furs, chiefly from members of the Royal Family. Among them were three sets of sable stoles and muffs, four sable coats lined with ermine, and one sealskin coat lined with sable. One of the j sable coals was a present from the ■ Czarina. It is a magnificent garment, made of the richest fur. and is worth quite £2OOO. She has had some of her furs ! altered, but lias only purchased a sable ! stole and muff since her Coronation. Thev | cost £l5O. Queen Alary has three personal maids or dressers who have charge of the Royal wardrobes. ’I he chief dresser lias a salary of £4BO per annum. She has been with

the Queen since her wedding, and is a clever, capable and well-educated woman. In addition to being well trained, and tasteful modiste, she is a good linguist, and can speak French and German fluently, and iias travelled extensively, as she has always accompanied Queen Alary on her journeys abroad. Queen Alary gives away all her left-off clothes. Some go to the poor dependents of Royalty, and a large quantity is distributed through a special agency to charitable organisations, but none of the recipients, except a direct dependent on Royalty, ever knows whence the garments have come.