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Updated: May 24, 2025
Not that Englishwomen en masse are not better-looking than the French, but that these last are so skilful in concealing defects, and revealing beauties by the appropriateness and good taste in their choice of dress, that even the plain cease to appear so; and many a woman looks piquant, if not pretty, at Paris, thanks to her modiste, her couturière, and her cordonnier, who, without their "artful aid," would be plain indeed.
She was a plump, little, fair-haired woman, with blue eyes, a very pink and white complexion, small hands, and a passion for dress with which people who had known her before her marriage, as a slim maiden devoted to sage-green draperies and square-toed shoes, declined to credit her, until they were told that she had, to put it plainly, grown fat a development which compelled her to give up æstheticism and employ a modiste.
Jealous without motive, and almost without love, he tormented with his suspicions, his reproaches, and his harshness, an attentive and industrious young wife, who loved him with intense love, and was unable to succeed in persuading him of it. From her condition, a modiste cannot dispense with being amiable, gracious, engaging.
One may make the garment that covers one I'm sure I don't know, but I've heard it but no one ever made a gown except a regular clothes woman a modiste." "And, for the matter of that, hers is beautiful. Do you see how the catch at the side of the dress is? It shows the bit of satin lining admirably." "Well, but how did she get such a charming gown if she is as you say well, 'hard up'?" "Ah!
For these the shops of Martinsburg, crammed with the latest fashions of Philadelphia, had been ransacked; the smartest modiste in Martinsburg had trimmed the hat with many yards of tulle and freighted it with pink roses; the smartest couturiere in Martinsburg had created that wonderful blue chintz frock, with ribbons woven through mazes of flounces; the last touch was my mother's the plait of hair, done so masterfully that even the weight of the great blue bow could not bend it.
In one gripping drama he felt cheated. The set showed the elaborately fitted establishment of a fashionable modiste. Mannequins in wondrous gowns came through parted curtains to parade before the shop's clientele, mostly composed of society butterflies. One man hovered attentive about the most beautiful of these, and whispered entertainingly as she scanned the gowns submitted to her choice.
Then discovering that she had a genius for dressmaking, she placed her with a first-class modiste in Edinburgh to be properly instructed and liberally attended to all financial requisites; for Rahal Ragnor could not do anything unless it was wholly and perfectly done.
The few other people present were as immaculate as bath, laundry, tailor, and modiste could make them. From one group at which Ben looked came the suppressed sound of a woman's laugh; from another, a man's voice, well modulated, illustrated a point with a story.
When they have not altogether discarded the follies or the ennui of dress, but patronize their modiste conscientiously, they have that "built up look" peculiar to those uncompromisingly respectable women of the first society in our own land, who frown upon the merely smart.
"I pray you, do not press me to discourtesy," says he. "Nay, but I would have a plain answer to my question," says she, haughtily. "Then," says he, angering in his turn, "I must tell you that I would as soon chip an antique statue to suit the taste of a French modiste as disfigure the work of him who designed this room."
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