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DueerillJilKelraxna of Holland
feF you say a girl dresses like a quern you
may mean to praise her, but, according to
the testimony of perhaps the greatest dress
maker and authority on dress In the United
States, you are " knocking." The queens of
the world In this day are declared by this
authority to have execrable taste In the se
lection and wearing of clothes, bad judgment
of color schemes, and they go among their subjects attired
In such dowdy style that a shop girl would give up her
cherished trip to a picnic rather than wear such Ill-fitting,
badly chosen clothes.
Wilhelmina Is the worst, according to this critic of
roynl garments, and Edward's queen Is but little behind
her, for, although she chooses clothes fairly well (or has
them chosen for her), she does not know how to put them
on or wear them, does not know how to wear her hair, or
what to wear upon her head.
The dowager Margherita alone of all these crowned
heads knows clothes. Some of them, according to the
dressmaker critic, cannot even wear their crowns becom
ingly, and make their robes of state look like hand me
downs from a bargain counter, while their every day
clothes, placed on them by scores of maids, look as If they
had been thrown at the wearer and alighted haphazard.
That England's queen manages to dress even as well as
he does is because she has made a chum of a well dressed
American woman who has shown her how to shop and
something of how to wear clothes.
4 4
Queens Indicted for Poor Taste.
The Indictment of bad taste brought against the female
royalty of the world by this American dressmaker, who
has gowned scores of American queens of fashion and
finance, contains the following counts:
" There Is no such thing as the queen's taste, or If there
Is, It is apt to be bad taste. Indeed. To be dressed like a
queen means to be dressed a great deal worse than the
average rich American woman who goes to the capitals of
the world to get her clothes. In fact, the American woman
did years ago what most of the queens of Europe have
failed to do even yet she grasped the fact that the whole
secret of dress Is to make women look young. This waa
the Idea that got Into the head of the great men dress
makers and which made fortunes for them because of the
good taste which has made Americans and other rich
women of the world recognize their achievements In this
line.
I " This kind of taste, queens, that Is most of the queens
of the present, are not blessed with. They not only haven't
any taste., but they are pigheaded. Take W'llhelmlna for
Instance. Was there ever anything more absurd than the
way she has dressed ever since she has come to the
throne? She Is not yet much out of her teens, and yet
she wears the most costly brocades and satins. It Is not
that Queen W'llhelmlna does not have a Parlsli-nne dress
maker, as she patronizes a house which Is probably con
sidered perfection by the elderly women of the Fauberg St.
Germain quarter. It Is not one, you may be sure, patron
ized by the younger generation, nut W'lllielmlna has no
Idea, apparently, of the great masters of the Rue de la
Pali, or that this matter of making women look young by
the choice adopted Is the Important thing with these
great houses. There are secrets which they practice which
it would hardly be expected that the young queen would
have mastered, but if she acted upon the advice of the
more fashionable of her relatives, the Grand Duchess
Vladimir, for Instance, she would probably have chosen
more wisely.
Wilhelmina Tears Up Dressing Room.
" The young queen, however, has decided Ideas of her
own about what she wears. She tries to be fashionable
and spends a great part of her time upon selections and
in devising ways and means for making herself attractive.
After she dresses her woman In waiting says that her
rooms show marks of the fray, which Indicate that the
young queen has more than once changed her mind about
what she Is to appear In. Gloves, coats, bats, and gowns
are strewn around by the dozen, with here and there a
whole ' shoot ' of them, as the waiting women ex
pressed it, turned over upon the floor. When she is
through, however, the chances are that Wilhelmina wil!
go out looking as no American girl of taste would think
for a moment of doing. For one thing she wears things
at the most remarkable times. Not long ago she went In a
close carriage to Inspect a warship. It was raining heavi
ly, and. Instead of improving her opportunity to wear some
fetching nautical costume, she rolled along in her coach
pressed In a trained white gown.
Another thing where she is woefully off in her reckon
ing is her choice of colors. For all of her beautiful clear
complexion of milky whiteness, she is fond of dingy neu
tral tints and affects gray, yellow, brown, blue, and red.
Bhe also seems to think it la her duty to appear In th
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although It was commonly attributed to her. The fact was
that It was for the then princess of Wales that a famous
London modiste brought out the glove fitting seamless
waist. It pleased the ' Jersey I.Ily,' who took to It at
once and ordered a duplicate. The modiste to her royal
highness, however, refused to make it, and for a year the
princess was the mistress of the jersey. After that It
became common property and was greatly affected by
the Jersey Lily.
" The queen also Introduced the princess bonnet, which
she wore with her close cloth gowns and which was good
In Its day. She has never Bhown any flexibility, however,
and has never been seen in a Gainsborough hat or In any
other style of headgear than some modification of her
former favorite.
"Years ago the queen wore navy blue.whlte, and mauve
and a great deal of cream color. Lately, however, she has
worn only black, white, and gray, until even the king ob
jected, to the point of getting an American woman, Mrs.
Arthur Paget, to try to persuade her to put on more color.
Alexandra likes Mrs. Paget's taste in dress and takes her
shopping with her, and it was throuKh her suggestion that
the note of green In which she has lately been seen, was
introduced Into her costume. Queen Alexandra can recog
nize and accept good ideas from others, but she has lost
whatever vogue she once possessed for being an original
dresser.
.4
richest silks and velvets and the most heavily embroi
dered robes that can be manufactured, upon every possi
ble occasion. The trouble Is that she gets her ideas from
her mother. Queen Emma, who Is still more hopeless In
her taste and who came from a tiny court where fashion
in the Parisian sense was not known. She has no sense
of the fitness of things, and la liable to wear a picture hat
with a walking costume or a little round felt hunting hat
with a trained velvet gown.
Alexandra's Ha'n a Fright.
" The women of the Dutch court do not go to Paris and
the ideas that would be absorbed at once by an Amer
ican even If she was only from a mining town, are entirely
passed by with Wilhelmina. This Uttle queen Is far from
being the only one who does not live up to her opportuni
ties. A great deal is said about Alexandra's perfect taste,
and it la true that she has a keen sense of the fitness of
things. Her passion, however, for simple and plain gowns.
Is carried to too great an extent for her rather military
air, and the plain bodices that she wears sometimes give
her an appearance of frumpiness. Her hair also is atro
cious and for many years the desire to copy royalty has
kept English women with an unbecoming mop of hair on
their foreheads when Anwlcans and Parisians were wear
ing It in graceful and becoming ways.
"The princesses are exact replicas of their mother In
their way of fixing their hair, and both appear in the same
stiff bang, which, in the case of the queen, is really a
curled toupee. Other English women have given up fol
lowing Alexandra In this respect during late years, how
ever, and it is noticeable that the ' fashions of the queen '
are not nearly so often followed as formerly. If you think
of It. they never have been in America, even in spite of
her popularity here.
Jl J
American Aids England's Queen.
" There are just two really good things that the queen
has Introduced, one belng,the high dog collar, which she
has kept fashionable to this day, and the other was the
termev.
" ThU the Jersey Lily was not responsible for at all, cared mora for comfort."
Kaiserin Looks Bad in Anything.
" The kalserln's husbund, as everybody knows, Inter
fered with her clothes, and It is said that when he did so,
he tried that good woman to an even greater extent than
he has by his other foibles. Ho did not succeed, how
ever, In making the Empress Augusta the fashion, and the
truth is that for all she has wonderful gowns made for
her and spends large sums upon her clothes, the empress
has not the faculty of wearing her things effectively.
" Her hats are worn too fur back upon her head and
her hair Is of the short and fuzzy order around her fore
head, which is hopeless In these days of luxuriant locks.
She makes the mistake of drawing the rest of It back
skin tight from her face, nml this Is one of the reasons that
she la never at her best In evening gowns.
" The kaiserin has not many Individual Ideas about her
dress and leaves the details to her dressmaker. Her good
figure and the fact that her riding hats are worn low over
her forehead In a way that suits her, makes her riding
dress the most becoming that the empress puts on. The
late tip-tilted down hats are also more suited to her than
anything she has worn formerly, and have improved her
considerably,
.4 4
Dowager Queens Are Frumps.
" The dowager queens are, all of them, what a stylish
American woman would call ' frumps.' Take Isabella, for
Instance. She gets herself up ' regardlessly,' of course,
and makes courageous efforts after stylish effects even
now that Bhe Is of an advanced age. Thick applications
of paint and powder are part of her plan. The result
though Is far from successful.
" Queen Christina Is too near Paris not to be well tinged
with some of the good ideas that come from that metropo
lis, but she wears her clothes with a stiffness which Is
distressing even In spite of the youthf ulness of her slender
figure. Like Alexandra, she emphasizes the long narrow
face, which Is a family falling, with a seraggly bang
pinned close to the temples. Invarlubly, too, the costumes
chosen both by Christina and her daughter, the Princess
Mercedes, are of the extremely conventional type, which
emphasizes the thin and narrow faced look which is pecu
liar to them. Queen Emma, on the contrary, who Is
dumpy, wears hair bunched out on each side and dons
hanging off bonnets, which bring out her roundness to the
greatest extent. Queen Margherita. of course, Is the ex
ception, as she dresses as beautifully as when she first
swayed the hearts of the people of Italy by her wonderful
laces and pearls.
t4 .4
Queen Helen Looks Comfortable.
' Queen Helen Of Italy, In spite of her beauty, will never
have the taste of Margherita. Although she appears In
tunning creations upon great occasions, her clothes usu
ally have more of the appearance of comfort than great
smartness. She has odd notions, too, about wearing her
gowns a great many times, which she will do if she hap
pen! to like one particularly. Not long ago some one
remonstrated with her about the number of times she was
seen In a violet frock, and she remarked that, as the king
liked It. she did not see any reason for not wearing 't.
Queen Olga of Greece, beloved by her people as she .,
has never shown great taste in her dress and has always
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