Dress has much to do with a youthful or aged appearance. Shawls and long mantles that fall from the shoulders give even youthful figures a look of age, because the lines are long and dignified and without especial grace. Beautiful wraps, or coats that do not come very far below the hip-line, can be worn becomingly by elderly ladies, neither emphasizing their years nor making them appear too frivolously attired. There is a smack of truth in the maxim, As a woman grows old the dress material should increase in richness and decrease in brightness. Handsome brocades, soft, elegant silks, woollen textures, and velvets are eminently suitable and becoming to women who are growing old.

Black, and black-and-white, soft white chiffon veiled in lace, cashmeres, and such refined tissues should be selected by those in “the first wrinkles of youth.” Grays combined with filmy white material, dull bronzes lightened with cream-tinted lace, are also charmingly appropriate. Pale blue veiled in chiffon is another grateful combination.

White should be worn more than it is by old ladies. It is so suggestive of all that is clean, bright, and dainty; and if there is anything an old lady should strive to be in her personal appearance it is dainty. Exquisite cleanliness is one of the most necessary attributes of attractive old age, and any texture that in its quality and color emphasizes the idea of cleanliness should commend itself to those in their “advanced youth.”

Little old thin women, large ones too, for that matter, who are wrinkled and colorless, should not wear diamonds. The dazzling white gems with pitiless brilliancy bring out the pasty look of the skin. The soft glow of pearls, the cloudlike effects of the opal, the unobtrusive lights of the moonstone harmonize with the tints of hair and skin of the aged.

Elderly women should not wear bright flowers on their bonnets or hats. Fresh-looking roses above a face that has lost its first youthfulness only make that fact more obvious. Forget-me-nots, mignonettes, certain pretty white flowers, the palest of pink roses, or the most delicate tint of yellow veiled with lace are not inappropriate for those who do not enjoy wearing sombre bonnets and hats which are composed only of rich, black textures. Lace cleverly intermingled with velvet and jewelled ornaments of dull, rich shades are exceedingly effective on the head-gear of the old.

Those who are gray-haired and indeed all women as they grow old should wear red above their brows instead of under their chins. A glint of rich cardinal velvet, or a rosette of the same against gray hair is beautiful.

Lace! Lace! Lace! and still more Lace for the old. Lace is an essential to the dress of a woman more than forty years of age. Jabots, ruches, yokes, cascades, vests, and gowns of lace, black or white, are all for the old. Rich lace has an exquisitely softening effect on the complexion. Thin women with necks that look like the strings of a violin should swathe, smother, decorate, and adorn their throats with lace or gossamer fabrics that have the same quality as lace. These airy textures, in which light and shadow can so beautifully shift, subdue roughnesses of the skin and harshness in lines. Old Dame Nature is the prime teacher of these bewitching artifices. Note her fine effects with mists and cobwebs, with lace-like moss on sturdy old oaks, the bloom on the peach and the grape. Nature produces her most enchanting colorings with dust and age. Laces, gauzes, mulls, chiffons, net, and gossamer throw the same beautiful glamour over the face and they are fit and charming accompaniments of gray hair, which is a wonderful softener of defective complexions and hard facial lines.

Too much cannot be written upon the proper arrangement in the neck-gear of the aged. The disfiguring wrinkles that make many necks unsightly may be kept in obeyance by massaging. No matter what the fashion in neck-gear, the aged must modify it to suit their needs. An old lady with a thin, pipe-stem neck should adopt a full ruche and fluffy, soft collar-bands. I cannot forbear repeating that tulle as light as thistle bubbles, either white or gray or black, is exquisitely effective for thin, scrawny necks. The fleshy, red neck should be softened with powder and discreetly veiled in chemisettes of chiffon and delicate net.

Old ladies may keep in the style, thus being in the picture of the hour; but it is one of the divine privileges of age that it can make its own modes. Absolute cleanliness, cleanliness as exacting as that proper nurses prescribe for babies, is the first and most important factor in making old age attractive. Rich dress, in artistic colors, soft, misty, esthetic, comes next; then the idealizing scarfs, collars, jabots, and fichus of lace and tulles. Old people becomingly and artistically attired have the charm of rare old pictures. If they have soul-illumined faces they are precious masterpieces.