=A WORD OF ECONOMY=

In the first days of stress, people sometimes give away every colored article they possess and not until later are they aware of the effort necessary, to say nothing of the expense, of getting an entire new wardrobe.  Therefore it is well to remember: 

Dresses and suits can be dyed without ripping.  Any number of fabrics—­all woolens, soft silks, canton crepe, georgette and chiffon, dye perfectly.  Buttonholes have sometimes to be re-worked, snaps or hooks and eyes changed to black, a bit of trimming taken off or covered with dull braid, silk or crepe, and the clothes look every bit as well as though newly ordered.

Straw hats can be painted with an easily applied stain sold in every drug and department store for the purpose.  If you cannot trim hats yourself, a milliner can easily imitate, or, if necessary, simplify the general outline of the trimming as it was, and a seamstress can easily cover dyed trimmings on dresses with crepe or dull silk.  Also tan shoes—­nearly all footwear made of leather—­can be dyed black and made to look like new by any first class shoemaker.

=MOURNING MATERIALS=

Lustreless silks, such as crepe de chine, georgette, chiffon, grosgrain, peau de soie, dull finish charmeuse and taffeta, and all plain woolen materials, are suitable for deepest mourning.  Uncut velvet is as deep mourning as crepe, but cut velvet is not mourning at all!  Nor is satin or lace.  The only lace permissible is a plain or hemstitched net known as “footing.”

Fancy weaves in stockings are not mourning, nor is bright jet or silver.  A very perplexing decree is that clothes entirely of white are deepest mourning but the addition of a black belt or hat or gloves produces second mourning.

Patent leather and satin shoes are not mourning.

People in second mourning wear all combinations of black and white as well as clothes of gray and mauve.  Many of the laws for materials seem arbitrary, and people interpret them with greater freedom than they used to, but never under any circumstances can one who is not entirely in colors wear satin embroidered in silver or trimmed with jet and lace!  With the exception of wearing a small string of pearls and a single ring, especially if it is an engagement ring, jewelry with deepest mourning is never in good taste.

=WHEN A VEIL IS NOT WORN=

Nor should a woman ever wear a crepe veil to the theater or restaurant, or any public place of amusement.  On the other hand, people left long to themselves and their own thoughts grow easily morbid, and the opera or concert or an interesting play may exert a beneficial relaxation.  Gay restaurants with thumping strident musical accompaniment or entertainments of the cabaret variety, need scarcely be commented upon.  But to go to a matinee with a close friend or relative is becoming more and more usual—­and the picture theaters where one may sit in the obscurity and be diverted by the story on the silver screen which, requiring no mental effort, often diverts a sad mind for an hour or so, is an undeniable blessing.  An observer would have to be much at a loss for material who could find anything to criticise in seeing a family together under such circumstances.