DRESSING YOUR PERSONALITY

Southland Times, Issue 23141, 6 March 1937, Page 16

DRESSING YOUR PERSONALITY

“The clothes that I enjoy wearing most of all,” said Joan Crawford, “are evening clothes. After a day’s work at the studio I often come home completely exhausted. To go straight to bed would be foolish, for I’d be taking the problems of the day with me and wouldn’t go to sleep for hours. So, instead, I take a warm bath with a handful of flower fragrance in it, and I put on an evening dress just to idle away a quiet evening at home with my husband.

“I’d recommend that to any one. Whether you are a housewife or a business woman, stop being practical and efficient for at least a few hours in the evening. Take off your sensible workaday clothes and put on the most exotic unnecessary dress you own. Let it be a .floaty sort of afternoon dress, if that’s what you like best. Or lounging pyjamas, if they set you up the most Not practical ones, you understand. But lovely ones that make you feel luxurious and attractive. Call it luxury if you life. To me it is a necessity. ‘Tm not being the least bit frivolous,” she said, “when I give you this advice. It’s the most practical advice in the world,'as a matter of fact. Try it a while and see for yourself. Be completely relaxed and as beautiful as you can be, for a few hours every evening of your life. And you will notice a difference in yourself almost at once. You will find that you carry over your mood of the evening before into your work the following day. You will work more easily and with less effort. You will look younger and less strained. You wjll smile more frequently and spontaneously. You

will enjoy your work more and find that it can be fun. “The value of a perfumed bath and a glamorous gown is, after all, not solely in the bath itself, nor the gown. For the perfume fades within a few minutes, and you wear the gown only for a few hours. But they both leave their lasting mark on your own attitude toward yourself. If you grow to think of yourself as that kind of woman, you will find that you wear your tweed coat and practical hat with a difference the next day. You will like yourself better, and so will every one who meets you or works with you. “Blue, by the way,” she continued, “is one of my favourite and most becoming colotus. It does very pleasant things for my blue eyes and my brown hair which has a cast of red in it. More than that, blue is associated in my mind with very pleasant occurrences in my life. I am, therefore, more relaxed and happy and sure of myself in blue. The colour, you see, has just as much of an effect on my mind as on my eyes. And I wear a great deal of white, too, for ihuch the same reasons. And so, if you looked through my personal wardrobe, you would find that almost everything is either blue or white.”