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Show Good Dresser Knows How to Wear Clothes By BITH MILLETT "A woman isn't well educatedwho doesn't know how to dress. A Frenchman told m that Jacques Helm, the designer, whose reputa- We, the Women tion depends on his knowing a great ' deal about women, what they art like and what they want to be like. Every observing woman knows that a well-dressed woman is some thing more than a fairly attractive person wearing well-designed clothes. You cant even add a beautiful beau-tiful woman plus a smart ensemble and get a well-dressed woman. There are som extras that hav to be added In. we understand that. But what they are, most of us hav not been able to say. Helm knows because it is his business to know. The first phase the well-dressed woman has to pass through is the period of coming to know herself. This should come when shs Is a young girl, but all too often It doea not And when It doesn't, "better late than never" is the designer's advice. Unless a woman can se herself exactly as she is, she can never hop to make the most of what is there. . " Knowing hertrrh neverlooks for clothes that have "personality." If she dresses to look like the duchess of Windsor this year and Greta Garbo next, she never seems to be a definite personality herself. Indeed, she even suggests by trying to buy personality that sh has none of her own. Once she has discovered what suits her best, she should keep to that. Take over what fashions seem to be for her, and leave the rest to her sisters. In other words, sh must learn to fit fashions to herself. her-self. The .woman who has what the Frenchman calls "feminine elegance." ele-gance." and Heim thinks she must have lived almost 30 years to have reached that point, understands how to feel in a dress, how in his words "to stick in It," as though the woman wo-man and the dress belonged to each other. If a woman doesn't understand under-stand that, she does just about as much for clothes as a wax model. |