OF THE CHANGING OF CLOTHES—OF THE WAY THEY WEAR ’EM—AND OF THE FEMALES OF THE DRESS-FERRET SPECIES
COMPARED with the good old days when dresses hooked up the back in such an intricate fashion that one needed blueprints, diagrams and charts in order to hook up a dress properly, there is practically no dress-changing at Palm Beach nowadays. In the old days the womenfolk spent at least forty per cent. of their waking hours changing their clothes. They changed their clothes whenever the wind changed. They changed their clothes every time a train came in. They couldn’t eat or go out in a wheel-chair or put on a string of beads or take a drink without changing their clothes. Their menfolk were kept constantly busy hooking them up the back.
To-day things are different. Dresses no longer hook up the back with their erstwhile whole-heartedness. Careful and competent observers state that many present-day dresses are safely attached to the human frame by as few as three hooks, all of which can be reached without dislocating an arm or displacing any vertebrae, and that an equal number of dresses are merely slid on over the head and worn just as they fall, without any further formality. A great many women at Palm Beach wear only two costumes each day—one for morning and afternoon that shows almost everything below the hips and one for evening that shows almost everything above the waist.
Not so many years ago a woman who wore only two dresses in one day at Palm Beach would have been regarded as mentally unbalanced or disgustingly pauperized.
The real snappy dressers, however, get in and out of three costumes a day; while it is not at all unusual to find prominent society camp-followers staggering in and out of as many as five and six daily costumes. How they ever do it will ever remain a mystery to us simple writers and oatmeal-manufacturers and mattress-makers from the buckwheat belt.
Every morning directly after breakfast, the hotel lobbies fill up with women who want to talk about dress. The Palm Beach dailies and weeklies cater to their pitiable weakness by specializing on thrilling information of this nature. So far as the female contingent at Palm Beach is concerned, an economic conference in Europe or a presidential utterance on the Bonus hasn’t a chance with such news as what Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney wore at the Beach Club last night.
Outside the warm sun may be beating down upon golden sands and an azure sea, the wind rustling softly through the palms and the bland air thrilling to the melodious murmur of the wheel-chair boys as they point out the Stotesbury cottage with caustic comments on the height of the Stotesbury wall. Yet the dress-ferrets sit on with bated breaths in the cool gloom of the hotel lobbies while the papers inform their enthralled readers that:
“Very smart was the slate colored strictly tailored suit worn by Mrs. Aurelius Vandersouse, Jr., at a recent Poinciana luncheon. Her hat was of a tone of straw perfectly harmonizing with the suit and bore only a flat bow of tomato-wire for trimming. The Honorable Mrs. D. Dryver Flubyer’s suit was fashioned of an imported bed-ticking fabric guiltless of any embellishment. Her chapeau was fashioned of the same fabric. Mrs. J. Eaton Swank wore a clinging gown of fromage-de-brie crêpe in a light heliotrope shade, fashioned in a one-piece style, with flowing sleeves and uneven hem, whose folds clung gracefully to the tall slender wearer.”
That’s the stuff to give the Palm Beach Battalion of Dress. Like Bosco, they eat it alive. They are veritable cormorants for it.