For Elegance

Those who are born to elegance enjoy all their lives a grace envied more than beauty itself. The problem of appearance is solved for them in advance, for their choice of clothes encourages and strengthens the harmony between desire and its satisfaction — the harmony determined by their natures and their inclinations. This charm, born of creative gift, tells upon everything connected with them, so that in the end the works they do bear the stamp of creation. And the simplicity of their relations with their surroundings accords with their innate, refined taste, so that they come to be wrapped in a wondrous halo, in a poetic atmosphere whose magic cannot be fathomed and cannot be overborne.

Elegance cannot be had by way of startling devices that catch the eye for a moment and soon become an occasion of weariness and disfavor. The element that is effective, in some measure, in this appearance is invention. Yet excessive willfulness overwhelms the first factor, whose purpose is always to perform the task of turning the moral values of beauty into values that can be felt.

When we see an elegant lady who is a stranger to us, we find in her the elegant woman who comes as close as may be to what we dream of as splendor in elegance — and this quite apart from whether she is a woman of means or a poor one. What is beyond doubt is that the choice of clothes shows personality in its truth; so we must not be surprised when people judge us at a mere glance at our outward appearances, which we determined of our own free will.

The modesty and sobriety necessary to elegance do not prevent personality from showing itself, at times, outside the recognized conventions of the dress current among people. Persons of imaginative inclinations and poetic tastes allow their personality to appear, above all those who have confidence in themselves: the least thing added to the outward appearance by way of refinement — the gloves, the handkerchief, or the ring — may show a want of matching, yet at the same time it bespeaks sound taste.

Elegance does not depend on any of the following things: order or its absence, tidiness or untidiness; its most salient quality is rather moderation in any one of these aspects. This is why the boastful and the timid are as far from elegance as earth is from heaven. It moves by the workings of the old rules, yet it is much affected by the new rules, if these rules spring from a sound taste, so that it can endure despite the changing of fashions and of persons. And elegance has no deadlier enemy than exaggeration in it.

Elegance suggests to the beholder an agreeable impression, making him own that its possessor is beautiful. But beauty itself does not always bespeak elegance. You may be a marvel of beauty and yet have nothing whatever of elegance; therefore we must never express beauty by elegance, even should the two qualities meet in a single person, for their elements are separate the one from the other. While we see that time has a great effect upon beauty — its flower withering with the passage of time, its freshness melting away with the passing of the days of youth — we find that elegance is untouched by time, however long its reign; nor is it touched by poverty, if it is deep-rooted in the nature of its possessor.