Fashion and Flower Etiquette of 1898

As a dinner gown, or as a costume for general evening wear, the gown shown in the illustration may well be adopted. It is particularly becoming to young women, though not at all inappropriate for the middle aged. 

Women and Fashion for Dinner or Evening Wear

and 

The Fashions and Etiquette of Flowers 

As a dinner gown or as a costume for general evening wear, the gown shown in the illustration may well be adopted. It is particularly becoming to young women, though not at all inappropriate for the middle aged. 

The material for the gown is black satin. The skirt is made rather full and falls in wide loose folds in the back. It is quite devoid of trimming. The corsage is finished in wide revers of mandarin velvet trimmed, with fanciful designs in jet. The front is of mandarin crepe de chine, gathered vertically.

About Wearing Flowers

Fashionable girls no longer have favorite flowers. Sentiment is sacrificed to style. Flowers for street wear must be chosen carefully. They must be inconspicuous blossoms and be worn only where fashion dictates. 

• Roses should never be worn with a street costume. 
• It is incorrect to wear on the street large bunches of any flower. 
• Violets and valley lilies are the fashionable flowers of the moment for street wear. The stems of the flowers should never be visible. They should be covered entirely by loops of ribbon. 
• Violets should be worn fastened to the left shoulder, but the valley lilies may be pinned at the waist. It is bad form to wear a bunch of violets with a shabby dress and a hat which has seen better days. It is equally bad taste to wear purple violets with a vivid red dress. 
• Whenever it is possible the flowers should harmonize with the coloring of the costume with which they are worn.
• Women should never carry large bunches of flowers to the theater unless they are in evening costume and are to sit in a box. 
• It is not good form for a woman to walk down the aisle of a theater carrying a bunch of flowers as large as a bridal bouquet. 
• Women should never over-decorate their hair with flowers, nor trim the corsage of their gowns, so that it bears an unmistakable resemblance to a flourishing flower garden. —New York Telegram, 1898

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia