Leave Your False Eyelashes in Town

Have you read the book A Guide to Elegance by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux? It was a 1964 guide "for every woman who wants to be well and properly dressed on all occasions" that was recently republished. A lovely reader recommended the section on hems to me, and I just recently bought it. It's a funny little book, half enlightening and half maddening. For every useful bit of advice, there's another that drives me batty: i.e., elderly women should wear mostly pastels, or anyone with hips bigger than 38" should not wear shorts. (Whatevs, Genevieve!) But as I've been wardrobe planning for my mini-break, I read with much interest the section on "Weekends," which is a guide for city dwellers who weekend in the country. (Hey, just like me and Bridget Jones!)

Genevieve says the ideal outfit for an elegant woman who is leaving to spend the weekend in the country is this:

• a suit, worn with flat-heeled shoes (or boots in the winter), and a handsome handbag of the traveling type.

A suit! How novel! For summer holidays, Genevieve says the suit should be a "brightly colored linen or cotton, and it would be accompanied by a shirtwaist, sandals, and a straw handbag." Now, a suit for a vacation seemed kind of crazy to me at first, but as a couple readers pointed out, upstate New York can get quite chilly in June. How about a full skirt and nipped-in jacket in bright red linen? Very New Look, like so:

Kind of brilliant, eh? Just think how it could coordinate with your other vacation wear, like your red gingham blouse!

But moving on. According to Ms. Dariaux, I will also need the following:

• a simple dressing gown that is neither sheer not voluminous, but pretty and fresh-looking for breakfast, which everybody will probably take together in the dining room. [Interjection: we are going to a bed & breakfast, so dining with others is likely, but I will be doing so fully clothed, thank you. Though a very good idea to remember cute sleepwear on a romantic mini-break!]
• a pair of trousers, a sweater or blouse, and, in the summer:
• a bathing suit and a sundress.
• for the evening: a trouser suit if the evening is to be spent informally at home with her friends; or
• a long dinner dress, slightly decollete, if her weekend hostess leads a more formal kind of life . . . but if the weekend program includes a more informal cocktail buffet type of evening, a more appropriate outfit would be:
• in the winter: a very simple white jersey dress with a bateau neckline, or a sleeveless wool sheath in a pale color; and in the summer: a dress of the same type in printed cotton or linen.

Exhausted yet? And we haven't even gotten to shoes, bags, gloves, and jewelry! The chapter concludes with this very sage advice:

Even if you are not at all an outdoor type of woman at heart, you should at least dress the part when you spend the weekend in the country, and by all means leave your false eyelashes in town.

Truer words were never spoken.