Beauty Fnhanced by Good Taste.

Otago Witness, Issue 2672, 31 May 1905, Page 66

Beauty Fnhanced by Good Taste.

The French women are the most beautiful in the world, not by grace of feature, for there are other nations that are just as well gifted as to features, but because of other traits.

They know how to dress and how not to dress.

They understand how to show off their own good points. And they know how to conceal their defects.

A Frenchwoman never displays her forehead fully.

A Frenchwoman never destroys the oval of her face.

A Frenchwoman never bundles her neck up high unless she be an old woman. A Frenchwoman seldom wears jewels near her eyes.

And a Frenchwoman takes good care to k-,eep her figure very near to the classic.

If one were to sum up the graces of the Frenchwoman one would say that she knows how to use her eyes ; that she understands the art of lifting up her chin ; that she has the trick of tilting her head at the right angle and that she has brought vivacity down to a fine art. Then one would say, also, that she makes the most of her best feature. If her eyes are her strong point she drapes her hair in Grecian waves across her temples so as to bring out the beauty of her eyes and she shades them delicately and makes her eyebrows grow long and dark and she coaxes her lashes to curl.

The Frenchwoman is sometimes accused of making up, but, if she makes up, she does so cleverly. She never overdoes it and she never makes up so that it is visible. Her little touch of rouge here and there is put on with the very greatest skill.

The Frenchwoman, for she must be considered as a class, dresses very peculiarly and different from any woman in the world. She dresses for the back. She takes care to dress well, considered from a front point of view. But she dresses with a special regard for those who shall see her from the rear.

The Frenchwoman takes great pride in her shoulder blades. "Let them get fat and you are lost," she says. And so it is. "Let your shoulder blades become stooping and you are ruined," she declares. " Let your shoulder blades get sharp and none of your gowns will fit you. Let your shoulder blades grow ungraceful and you might as -well give up the beauty quest."

The beautiful Frenchwoman of society never has a back cushioned in fat.

She never has a back that is narrow at the shoulders and wide at the waist line.

The broadest part of her back is right at her shoulders, and even her hips are narrower, while her waist can almost be spanned. The French beauty does not cover her back with irritating -woollens, for she knows that they injure the skin. Her back is protected with fine silk, or with wool that is as soft as down. She is very fond of silk underwear, and she has a great fad for wearing it -underneath her heavy garments, even in the coldest of weather.

When it comes to the display of her back and neck and arms the Frenchwoman excels. She shrugs with them. She says yes and no. She expresses surprise, joy, disdain, and sorrow, all by the .gestures of her neck and arms. She laces her waist so tight that it seems as though she would break in two. But her bust is free and her breathing space is full. She would not think of cramping her lungs. She pulls the laces tightly below the ribs and below the lung- space, and below the bust line, in order that the beautiful upper figure may have plenty of Toom in "which to breathe and expand and be graceful. " I think," said a woman, " that a Frenchwoman's secret lies in her diet. She keeps her figure all her life, and her complexion until she is an old woman. At 60, though her skin may be wrinkled a little, her eyes are still bright, and, when she gets to be 70, she has all the charming little arts which she had at 40. " The Frenchwoman has a certain diet to which she clings rigidly all her life, and her beauty and her chic axe her reward.

*' For one thing she eats no breakfast. Her morning -meal, which is taken early, consists of a cup of black coffee and a -very small roll, with .no butter at all. "The American woman at that time is eating fruit and cereals, rolls and coffee with milk, and like as not a chop, and maybe an egg. She is taking one of the heartiest meals of the day. "But the Frenchwoman gets up, takes heT cup of black coffee, nibbles her roll, and she has had her breakfast. It is all she wants.

" The French woman does not grow stout on this breakfast and she comes to the luncheon table at 12 o'clock with an appetite. She has not overloaded her stomach. She has no sick headache. She is trim and healthy. She has given her system a chance." The Frenchwoman, beside the art of diet, has acquired the art also of dressing her hair. There is something beautiful in the way the Frenchwoman waves her locks. Straight hair is unknown in Paris and the French wave is famous in beauty's annals. To get this wave requires every art of the hairdresser, and the latest curling processes are employed. The best wave is obtained by dampening the hair with alcohol. It is then dried. And, finally, it is held in the tongs while one counts sixty. The tongs, by the way, should be only moderately hot.

Whatever may be the secret of the Frenchwoman's charm it is certain -that she is charming. And. perhaps, that is enough to know. — Brooklyn Daily Eagle.