Dress for the Frankly Fifties

Ladies' Mirror, Volume V, Issue 2, 2 August 1926, Page 21

Dress for the Frankly Fifties

Most women of fifty nowadays can manage to look any age from thirty-five to fortythat is to say, if they keep slim, have good teeth, a good skin and bright hair. But there are a number of women who at fifty look fifty. From one or two of these readers we have had inquiries in regard to suitable dress. There is a great beauty about mid-dle-age, that time in which a woman recognises that she has passed over the border-line of youth and is content to wait patiently for those peaceful days when one is too proud of one's years to wish to hide them. My sympathies are always with those women —matrons and mothers of families, usuallywho resign themselves to looking fifty, knowing that if they try to hide their years they would only succeed in making themselves ridiculous as the result. When the woman of fifty is inclined to be stout, she will find it wiser to dress in dull, soft, easily

draped materials. Georgette and crepe-de-chine are more becoming to her, for instance, than satin or repp. Some of the new satins are beautifully soft, but the best of them have a way of bringing out lines in the face and emphasising the defects of an over-ample figure. Georgette and crepe-de-chine are becoming to the gaunt, thin woman also, because they soften harsh lines, and fullness can be introduced into frocks of these materials, which is becoming to this particular type.

Many middle-aged women can make themselves much fresher and ■ younger-looking by wearing a touch of soft white at the throat. A white georgette vest introduced into a black dress is always becoming; so are white turned-down collars. Some women, owing to the wrinkled state of the neck, are wiser to wear high collars, but don't let them be stiff high collars. A band of ribbon surmounted by some pleated frilling is often quite effective. Sometimes, instead of a collar, you can wear a

tulle scarf wound once round the throat.