ON THE ANTIQUE GREEK DRESS FOR WOMEN 37 



gives an appearance to the dress at the back of being double. 

 The dress is now complete, if no sleeves are wanted; but if 

 sleeves are desirable and in private life ladies seem to prefer 

 them sew two or more buttons of smaller size on the front at 

 b, on each side of a ; observe the same rules in sewing on these 

 and the corresponding loops which have been given for the chief 

 buttons at a that is to say, turn in the edge and gather a 

 little handful of stuff, on to which the button is to be secured. 

 The dress is now finished, with the exception of such trimming 

 or embroidery as may be put along the bottom the only place 

 where embroidery or any pattern (except stars and spots) was 

 allowed. 



The make of the dress is a trifle ; how to put it on is the 

 difficulty. Button the left-hand button at a and leave the 

 other loose ; slip the gown over the head, 

 and, in the attitude so commonly repre- 

 sented, button the second button over the 

 right shoulder ; a petticoat and another 

 garment or two may be allowed under the 

 tunic, but no stays. If the sleeves are not 

 buttoned, the garment will hang from the 

 bust, as shown in Fig. 2 ; the gathered 

 folds at a will spread as they fall and join 

 in front, so as to make a series of curves FlG 2 



which fall over the bosom somewhat like 

 a series of chains, each longer than the preceding one. There 

 is ample fulness over the bust, but this fulness all comes 

 from the two points at the shoulders. In nine out of ten 

 statues this will be found to be the case ; in nine out of ten 

 modern pictures the fulness will be found produced in modern 

 millinery fashion, either by the expedient of a tape run- 

 ning in a seam (true millinery terms are not known to the 

 writer) or by a series of plaits sewn on to a stiff flat border in 

 both cases the folds run straight up and down, like the plaits 

 in a night-gown, and are to my eye intolerably ungraceful. 

 Examples could easily be given from modern pictures and pho- 

 tographs where the stuff is thin, the faces and figures pretty, 

 but in which the busts are not in the least Greek, because the 

 artist has not studied how the Greeks arranged the fulness of 



