The usual kind of waterproof is like brown paper, has stiff folds and little sheen. Any kind of an oilskin, however, has a good deal of shine. The excellent drawing of a Burberry (pi. 22a) shows the rather stiff folds that are absent only from the most flimsy kind of rainproof, and the peculiar predominance of light over dark tones that appears on a garment sketched in the open air when there is no sun. There is a clever suggestion here, too, of the shine that comes from the wetness of the rain, rather than from the nature of the material. Some women's waterproofs seek to imitate silk, satin and even velvet, and it is only kind to treat them as if they had succeeded.
The third group consists of transparent materials, of which chiffon is the arch-tvpe. So transparent is chiffon that, whatever its colour, it can be almost
entirely negatived by what is beneath it. The true tone shows in the folds, where they are double or, better still, triple. A black chiffon over white appears as a pale grey, but a darker grey in the tones that recede, and black in the folds. A white chiffon over a white slip appears, naturally enough, as white, but where the chiffon is single over flesh it appears as a tone midway between that of the flesh and white. When black chiffon is used in connection with other black fabrics, the chiffon, even at its darkest, never appears as anything like dead black, or even as dark as the darkest tone of the others ; this is due partly to the dulness of its surface and partly to the fact that, being transparent, it is always penetrated to some extent by light, however removed it may be from the source of light. Never let the folds of chiffon hang heavily ; even when there is not a breath of air the lightness of the stuff prevents it from falling quite straight. Chiffon often has the tendency to flare out from the last few inches of its hem ; often, too, its hems are unsewn and you can express this in a wash drawing by leaving off your work without any kind of an outline. An example of this can be seen in No. 5 (pi. 21). High-lights on chiffon and other transparent stuffs are best taken out with the rubber ; but sparingly and gently, for chiffon is far from lustrous, and a high-light is not so much the light shining on, as through it. An extremely good, and very simple, treatment of dark chiffon by Luza (pi. 25a) shows one or two points. You might have expected the dress to appear a deeper tone, where it is seen through chiffon of the same colour, than where it is unveiled ; but the artist has rightly avoided this mistake, since the jacket, through which the dress is seen, swings free and is consequently saturated with light. In this drawing the washes are all transparent and the line is in pencil. This treatment being simplified, the chiffon is not shown as darker in the folds, as it is in No. 5 (pi. 21). Another dress by Luza, in either chiffon or crepe georgette (pi. 26) is expressed even more simply, with merely the two transparencies. From this page you can learn how well a pencil line reproduces in a half-tone drawing, provided a fine screen is used. All the lines in this drawing were done in pencil, and the paper used had a rather crepy surface which can just be discerned'on the dark dress, done with a transparent wash, the flesh on the other figure being done with an opaque wash.
Printed chiffons offer but one problem, and that is how much of the pattern on the under layer should be allowed to show through the top layer. I think, none ; because the design on a printed chiffon is usually so vague that a serious confusion results from a repetition of it through itself. In the same way, when lace is double, it is enough to show this by deepening the tone ; in practically every case it is too much to show the pattern coming through. Lace has been so often referred to in Chapter Five that there seems no more to add, except to say that lace is sometimes sewn at the hem in the ordinary way like any other material, but not very often the dressmaker contrives to arrange it so
that the variegated edge of the lace comes at the hem or at the neck ; the greatest care must always be taken to distinguish between the hemmed and the natural edges of lace, both in your note and your interpretation of it.
Net and tulle have a greater transparency than chiffon and the vitality of taffeta. When used for the bodice of a dress that is to say, when they are stretched across a solid body they have the appearance of a rather ungraceful chiffon. They are more often used for skirts, often in tiers, and, in cases where the whole skirt is made of frills of tulle, it is usually safe for you to exaggerate the mass of it, in contrast to the sheath of body and hips. Tulle and net, like chiffon, are sometimes picot-edged, sometimes unhemmed, the edges being cut with scissors and left like that; when you are expressing this in a wash drawing, do not draw a line to express such an edge ; merely leave it. Sometimes these stuffs have a certain amount of glaze and involve a number of dry high-lights, but no reflected lights and not very dark shadows.
Chiffons and nets are sometimes spangled and beaded. Just as these are superimposed on the fabric, so must they be expressed in your drawing by added touches of body colour and black. If spangles are added in such profusion that they practically form a continuous glittering fabric, you had best express this by dragging on the passages of light and dark with a rather dry brush, always adding an occasional sparkle of light in the shadows (and vice versa) as there are inevitable little irregularities of this kind in a beaded material.
Fringe is a beautiful medium for a dress ; it hardly comes into either of the three categories and is at present suffering an eclipse in the world of fashion. The great point, when drawing fringe, is to show quite clearly that it is not a pleated material. This can only be done by showing the occasional gaps made in it by the movement of the wearer, by separating an occasional strand here and there, and giving it a slightly exaggerated or contrary movement, and by making an occasional strand a fraction of an inch longer than its fellow. Any hard line along the ends of the fringe, giving it the continuity of a hem, is to be avoided.
Pleating of various kinds is a treatment that can be given to any fabric in the second or third category but not, as far as I know, to velvet. The great thing to show with pleats is where they are flat and where they are released into fulness. This can be shown either by a line of stitching along such part of them as is sewn down, or by a knife-edge high-light along such part as is not. It is as well to show a little movement in pleats, even if the figure is standing still, as the beauty of pleats lies to a great extent in the contrast between the compression and the release. It would be impossible here to go into the great number of varieties of pleats, but care must be taken to note the exact kind, when sketching the dress. There are also other ways of achieving fulness, besides pleats, flares, insertions and cutting on the cross. There is gathered fulness released from a band (pi. 27), there is ruching (pi. 34), and a variety of ways, for which it is not easy to find a
name, and of which the right-hand figure on pi. 26 affords an example, with its curiously beautiful combination of twisting, gathering, draping and pleating.
Of other complications that occur on hats and dresses, such as bows, feathers and artificial flowers, the great thing to remember about them is that you must always simplify them to exactly the same extent (no more, no less) as the garment on which they appear. Do not spend a happy hour of devoted care upon a rose or an embroidered motif, when you are using a simple, hurried style to express the dress on which it occurs.
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