WOMAN DECORATIVE IN HER MOTOR CAR

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CHAPTER XIII

WOMAN DECORATIVE IN HER MOTOR CAR

T is not easy to be decorative in your automobile now that the

manufacturers are going in for gay colour schemes both in upholstery and

outside painting. A putty-coloured touring car lined with red leather is

very stunning in itself, but the woman who would look well when sitting

in it does not carelessly don any bright motor coat at hand. She knows very well

that to show up to advantage against red, and be in harmony with the putty-colour

paint, her tweed coat should blend with the car, also her furs. Black is smart with

everything, but fancy how impossible mustard, cerise and some shades of green

would look against that scarlet leather!

An orange car with black top, mud-guards and upholstery calls for a costume of

white, black, brown, tawny grey, or, if one would be a poster, royal blue.

Some twenty-five years ago the writer watched the first automobile in her

experience driven down the Champs Elysées. It seemed an uncanny, horseless

carriage, built to carry four people and making a good deal of fuss about it.

A few days later, while lunching at the Café de Reservoir, Versailles, we were told

that some men were starting back to Paris by automobile, and if we went to a

window giving on to the court, we might see the astonishing vehicle make its start.

It was as thrilling as the first near view of an aëroplane, and all-excitement we

watched the two Frenchmen getting ready for the drive. Their elaborate preparation

to face the current of air to be encountered en route was not unlike the preparation

to-day for flying. It was Spring--June, at that--but those Frenchmen wearing very

English tweeds and smoking English pipes, each drew on extra cloth trousers and

coats and over these a complete outfit of leather! We saw them get into the things

in the public courtyard, arrange huge goggles, draw down cloth caps, and set out at

a speed of about fifteen miles an hour!

PLATE XVI

A portrait of Mrs. Thomas Hastings of New

York painted by the late John W. Alexander.

We have chosen this--one of the most

successful portraits by one of America's

leading portrait painters--as a striking

example of colour scheme and interesting

line. Also we have here a woman who carries

herself with form. Mrs. Hastings is an

accomplished

horsewoman.

Her

fine

physique is poised so as to give that

individual movement which makes for type;

her colour--wonderful red hair and the

complexion which goes with it--are set off

by a dull gold background; a gown in another

tone of gold, relieved by a note or two of

turquoise green; and the same green

appearing as a shadow on the Victory in the

background.

We see the sitter, as she impressed an

observer, transferred to the canvas by the

consummate skill of our deeply lamented

artist.

A Modern Portrait By John W. Alexander

The above seems incredible, now that we have passed through the various stages of

motor car improvements and motor clothes creations. The rapid development of the

automobile, with its windshields, limousine tops, shock absorbers, perfected

engines and springs, has brought us to the point where no more preparation is

needed for a thousand-mile run across country with an average speed of thirty miles

an hour, than if we were boarding a train. One dresses for a motor as one would for

driving in a carriage and those dun-colored, lineless monstrosities invented for

motor use have vanished from view. More than this, woman to-day considers her

decorative value against the electric blue velvet or lovely chintz lining of her

limousine, exactly as she does when planning clothes for her salon. And why not?

The manufacturers of cars are taking seriously their interior decoration as well as

outside painting; and many women interior decorators specialise along this line and

devote their time to inventing colour schemes calculated to reflect the personality

of the owner of the car.

Special orders have raised the standard of the entire industry, so that at the recent

New York automobile show, many effects in cars were offered to the public.

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