RUSKIN ON GIRLS’ DRESS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue IX, 3 March 1894, Page 198

RUSKIN ON GIRLS’ DRESS.

Dress as plainly as your parents will allow you, but in bright colours (if they become yon), and in the best materials —that is to say in those which wear longest. When you are really in want of a new dress (buy it or make it) in the fashion ; but never quit an old one merely because it has become unfashionable. And if the fashion be costly you must not follow it. You may wear broad stripes of narrow bright colours, or dark, short petticoats or long (in moderation), as the public wish you ; but you must not buy yards of useless stuff to make a knot or a flounce of, nor drag them behind you over the ground. And your walking dress must never touch the ground at all. If you can afford it, get your dresses made by a good dressmaker, with the utmost attainable precision and perfection ; but let this good dressmaker be a poor person living in the country—not a rich person living in a large house in London. Learn dressmaking yourself with pains and time, and use a part of the everyday needlework, making as pretty dresses as you can for poor people who have not time nor taste to make them nicely for themselves. You are to show them in your own wearing what is most right and graceful, and to help them to choose what will be prettiest and most becoming in their own station. If they see you never try to dress above youis, they will not try to dress above theirs.