no longer favorable places for the display of toilets, the more so as even in the orchestra stalls of the Opéra a dress-coat is not absolutely obligatory. Nevertheless, the new fashions spread with greater rapidity than ever; and even remote foreign countries are not more than twelve months behind Paris. The great vulgarizers of fashion at the present day are the large dry-goods stores like the Louvre and the Bon Marché. The manner of proceeding is as follows: Perdi, the "grand couturier," creates a toilet for a lady of reputed elegance, for one of the princesses of Paris. If the toilet is a success, Perdi's rivals will copy it for their customers, while the rich for eign ladies who get dressed at Paris will introduce it into their respective countries, and the cosmopolitan fashion journals will describe it and distribute engravings of it wherever they have subscribers. Thus far, however, the toilet will have remained the monopoly of the half-dozen "grands couturiers" of Paris and their minor rivals. Now at this point the Louvre and the Bon Marché enter the field, and take possession of the new model, provided that it can be copied at a reasonable price and with cheap materials, and in a few weeks they have for sale at moderate prices thousands of costumes resembling more or less, and, at any rate in the general lines, the model created by Perdi for his elegant customer, la belle Madame X. So the new fashions become vulgarized, the new models fall, so to speak, into the public domain, and the princesses can, of course, no longer deign to wear them. Thus the existence of a princess of fashion is a perpetual beginning over and over again. No sooner has she achieved perfection in a hat, a mantle, or a gown than the vulgarizers set to work to make the hat, the mantle, and the gown odious by cheap imitation and promiscuous multiplication. Thanks to the colossal enterprises after the manner of the Louvre and the Bon Marché, the research of distinction has become, perhaps, more difficult than it ever was, and the existence of a leader of fashion is as much one of constant creative effort as that of a great painter or a great sculptor. In the matter both of her beauty and of its adornment such a woman is, as it were, at once the statuary and the block of marble. artists of prodigious genius. Draughtsmen and colorists at the same time, as the perfect plastic artist should be, they produce compositions of incomparable variety, ranging in style from the harmonious puissance of the figures of the Florentine frescoes, the richness of Venetian splendor, and the linear simplicity of medieval costume, to the amiable frivolity of Watteau's gowns, and the infinite and amusing voluptuousness of the toilets and under-clothing of the present day. There are certainly no men or women more wrapped up and thoroughly absorbed in their art than the Parisian dressmakers and milliners, unless it be the Parisian hair-dressers. In the art of coiffure there are masters who produce works of genius, and that too by the exercise of the same faculties as the plastic artists. A man like Auguste Petit, the Worth of hair-dressers, is an artist to the tips of his finger-nails, a creature of refined sensibility, of acute and rapid perception, and of abundant creativeness. Above all things, the coiffure of a woman is a matter of taste and sentiment rather than of mere fashion. The rank and file, the mere operators, the eternal copyists, may be content to dress a woman's hair according to the models decreed by fashion and published in the special journals. The artist, on the other hand, every time he dresses the hair of one of the princesses of fashion makes an effort of composition and seeks a happy inspiration, the suggestions of which he will control and correct with reference to the character and expression of the subject's face, the natural silhouette of the head, the general lines of the features, and the style of the toilet worn. In the ensemble of the dressed woman, the coiffure is the decorative part that completes and gives the finishing touch to the rest. A coiffeur like Auguste Petit, we might say, has coach-houses and stables, but no shop. His days are spent in an elegant coupé, which transports the artist and his genius from dressing-room to dressingroom. In the evening he drops in at the Opéra to see how the coiffure of Madame la Marquise compares with that of la petite Baronne Zabulon. From time to time, on the occasion of some great ball, he makes a journey to London, Madrid, or Vienna, for his reputation is European, The great dressmakers, too, are creative and his talent is in request wherever there are manifestations of supreme elegance. Like the great dressmaker, the coiffeur, such as we are now describing, is a product of the Second Empire, and of that galaxy of fair or witty women who were the queens of the fêtes of the Tuileries, Compiègne, and Fontainebleau, Madame de Metternich, the Duchesse de Morny, Madame de Pourtalès, Madame de Gallifet, the Marquise d'Hervey de SaintDenis, those "grandes mondaines" who created traditions of social luxury in harmony with the amusing, heedless, and dashing régime which made modern Paris-the Paris of the Baron Haussmannthe capital of nineteenth-century hedonism and the paradise of elegance. In republican Paris the conditions of the display of luxury are no longer the same as they were under the empire, but the traditions that animate the artists of luxury and their patrons are the same, and the leaders and marshals of fashion are still the ladies of the empire. These women made a study of elegance and a profession of beautiful appearance more complete and more intelligent, perhaps, than any of the daughters of Eve who preceded them on the face of the earth, and they achieved a perfection of harmonious bearing, an originality of composition, a stylishness, a chic, to use an accepted term, which has not yet been surpassed. The secret of this chic lies partly in the peculiar genius of the Parisienne, and partly in unfailing application and in the striving after absolute elegance and fulness of pleasurable life in conditions of material beauty. This ideal is sufficient to call forth and absorb all the energies of a woman, and only the women of genius and strong will have the strength to persist and never to fail. Such a woman is the beautiful Marquise d'H., who is depicted in our illustration in her dressing-room, reflected in a triple mirror, while the most poetical and inspired of the grand coiffeurs of Paris arranges her hair for the opera. In the Marquise's dressing-room everything is thoroughly practical; there is no useless decoration, no excess of furniture. one side of the room is an alcove containing the bath and the apparatus for all varieties of douches; on the opposite side vast systems of cupboards and drawers for the linen; on the third side a window and the toilet table; and on the opposite side the triple mirror. It is simplicity it On self, a mere laboratory. And what else could it be? The secret of that beauty which lasts thirty years consists not in painting the cheeks, hiding wrinkles, and replacing lost hair, but in having no need to do these things. The true Parisienne, as we have been told by the poet who studied them most deeply, washes herself with pure water like a nun, and has no dealings with dentists or with those who sell cosmetics and false hair. Therefore her dressing-room cannot be other than simple, just as the studio of a great painter is often severe in aspect even to austerity, for the toilet of the Parisienne and the daily composition of her beauty are the result of taste, sentiment, and inspiration, even as a picture or a statue, and their perfection is due to persistent and exacting self-criticism. Thanks to this constant criticism the aspect of the Parisienne is never romantic nor commonplace, for she cannot be guilty either of excess or of neglect. Her toilet is perfect; her coiffure is a poem; and however surpassingly beautiful the one or the other may be, she wears them with absolute ease, as if she had never worn anything else. III. "Que l'été brille où que ce soient les jours tristes, Je pense amèrement au destin des modistes." So sings Auguste Vacquerie, doubtless with cryptic allusion to the close workshops where the milliners toil late and early for small pay. And yet the milliners do not generally seem to appeal to our pity or sympathy, especially the young ones whom we see promenading along the Boulevard des Italiens at the lunch hour, delighting in noonday gossip over sour apples and fried potatoes. In familiar groups, their arms around one another's waists, they walk up and down, taking the air, and their appearance is one of the first signs of the awakening of elegant Paris. Dressed in sober black, cloakless and hatless, often pale and anæmic, they have nevertheless a certain distinction. In the neatness of their coiffure and the dainty fit of their simple black gowns there is an intimation of luxurious frequentations, a pale reflection, as it were, of the chic of those hats and mantles and gowns which they help to make for the great ladies of the earth. Their destiny, what is it? Modest labor, the possibility of rising to be chiefs of |