Wausau Pilot

RESULT OF DIRECTOIRE SCARE
New Modes Teach Dressmakers Value of the One-Piece Costume.

Fashion cares are seldom as serious as they seem, says the Manchester Guardian. If the alarmists who prophesy the ascendency of the directoire gown were to be believed, most women would have good reason to adopt Hamlet's advice to Ophelia about getting to a nunnery. There is about one woman in a hundred to whom the directoire gown is or would be becoming; about one place in a hundred in which a directoire gown is appropriate to be worn. If a woman has the classic face and form of a Mme. Tallien, and nothing to do but hold salons and drive in her carriage, and an artist to make her gowns, she can take to the French styles of 1795 with confidence.

But rarely is Fate so kind. Mostly it is (apologies to Browning):
Never the form and the cash
And the right gown all together.

But there's no real cause for worry, for directoire gowns won't reign, except in the fashion plates. And the directoire scare will have at least one good result. It will teach dressmakers the value of the one-piece dress. Only the woman who has worn the one-piece dress knows the holy calm of feeling that she needn't ever be afraid that she is "coming apart in the back."

Inventive women, unable to bear the wear and tear of that fear, have for some time been joining bodice and skirt together, making one garment of the two. It is delicious to know that the dressmakers have got to do it now.

There is, too, one point in the directoire styles which should recommend them to economical mothers of daughters. No more need the big sister's last winter's frock be tucked in the skirt to make next winter's frock for the little sister. Instead, let a portion of the bodice be cut off at the bottom, and, with the skirt sewn to what is left of the bodice, bringing the band just below the armpits, and with a soft sash covering the "join," there is a directoire gown for the younger and shorter girl.