Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 295, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1913 — ROYAL DRESS GOST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ROYAL DRESS GOST

Victoria of Spain Most Costly Attired of Queens. Where the Old Clothes Go—Some Discarded Garments Are Sold, Some Returned to Maker and Others Given Away. ' 11 • '• r London.—lt goes without saying that the expenditure of queens on dress is of necessity high, and it is higher today by a good deal than it was 25 or 50 years ago, says a writer in London Answers. s > The most expensively attired consort of a reigning European monarch is generally supposed to be the queen of Spain. * Her Spanish majesty’s dress bills for gowns alone run to more than $15,000 a year. She purchases most of her dresses in Paris and is more punctilious about being modishly attired than any other royalty. Her majesty rarely wears a gown more than half a dozen times, practically never has a gown altered, and never, at home or abroad, is seen two days in succession in the same gown. „ For her morning and afternoon gowns Queen Victoria pays from $75 to $l5O. She purchases about seventy of such gowns in the year, and, taking the average price at $125 each, this would mean ap outlay of $8,750 on morning and afternoon gowns alone, while her bills for evening gowns would amount to about $9,000. The queen of Spain seldom orders less than half a dozen gowns at a time, and frequently will order as many as twenty or thirty. Her majesty, however, ' has an understanding with most of the modistes whom she patronizes that every gown she does not care about when it is completed may be returned. The German express is, of all great royal ladies, the least modishly attired. Her majesty holds the opinion that in matters of dress royal ladles —ladies

of the royal house of Hohenzollern, at any rate —should be a law unto themselves. The German empress orders the bulk of her gowns in Berlin, her bills for which run to from SB,OOO to SIO,OOO a year. One of the dressmakers patronized by the German empress was for-

inerly a dressing maid at the German court. She retired from the royal service on account of ill health when she was about forty years old and to supplement her pension she started dressmaking in a small way, and her former royal mistress most graciously gave the woman her phtronage. Queen Mary Is also most economically attired for the consort of a great European sovereign. Her.majesty’s bills for gowns when she was princess of Wales ran to abouts3,ooo a year, and as queen they do not much exceed that figure. The queen, of course, does not “wear out” any of her gowns, but she never allows a morning or afternoon gown to be put out of the royal wardrobes until she has worn It at least a couple of dozen times. For her evening gowns Queen Mary pays from $125 to S2OO, and for moiling or afternoon gowns from SSO to $75, and for tweed walking dresses ; from S3O to S4O. There is a custom existing among most royal women, as well as among others who spend large sums on dresses, of disposing of the dresses and gowns that are put out of their wardrobes to certain dress agencies, and the money so realized is used to defray part of their dress bills. Two large dress agencies in Paris have the handling of most of the left off dresses of European royalties. These transactions are conducted by the chief dressers of the various royal women and the former are allowed to .ake a certain commission on the sales. The sale of the queen of Spain’s dresses annually amounts t > about $4,000, and of the czarina to about a hundred pounds less. Neither Queen Mary nor the German Empress, however,

ever sell their left-off dresses. Queen Mary’s left-off gowns are given away to the poorer dependents of royalty, or are distributed through certain charitable agencies to poor gentlefolk. The German empress disposes of her left-off dresses In much the same way, except that they are practically all given to people In some way or other connected with the court

Queen Victoria of Spain.