Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1913 — IMITATION MADE A FINE ART [ARTICLE]

IMITATION MADE A FINE ART

Writer Can Bee Excuses for the Copying of Btyles Belonging to the Past Ages. We have had the renaissance period, the directoire period, the imperial period—why. not the “imitation” period as well? The colonial houses are imitated; so is old furniture. As for dress, imitation is the dominating note of the whole fashionable world. Beauty Is not even skin deep nowadays; it is copied with the same facility and ease with which a mediocre artist can reproduce the likeness of a famous picture. Why, the painting of a portrait pales into insignificance beside the work of thj> geniuses who create the styles. It may not be possible to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear—but who wants a silk purse, at any rate, with such splendid silver imitations on the market, all glittering with imitation Jewels? Give Dame Fashion Kipling’s foundation of “a rag, a bone and a hank

of hair” to wore upon, and she wilt transform a snub-nosed, pasty-faced bit pf femininity into an alluring, fascinating siren, so admirably' exact s replica of natural beauty that only some unpleasant expert can detect the subterfuge.—New York Press. . ;