If a lady intends to take an evening train she may, if she pleases, appear at dinner in traveling hat and dress. If she is going to the theater, opera-house, or concert-hall, she will wear the kind of costume described in Chapter XII.
Correspondents sometimes ask what the proper dress is for Sunday evening at a hotel. Opinions on this subject vary in accordance with people’s religious views or inherited traditions. While the old-fashioned strict observance of the Sabbath has been much relaxed both in England and in America, the Puritan view of the day still strongly influences the manners and customs of the country at large. Those who hold to it prefer to dress quietly and to eschew low-necked gowns on Sunday evening. They appear in costumes suitable to wear at church, even if they have no intention of going there. There are many other people, especially in a cosmopolitan city like New York, who hold no such view of the observance of Sunday, and dress then as they would on any other day of the week.
Ladies always retain their hats in the daytime at a restaurant or roof-garden. They remove their gloves on sitting down to table, and throw back or take off their outer wraps. It is usually possible to check these, but many people object to the delay involved. Women of good taste prefer to dress quietly if they attend a dancing-tea at one of these places, and thus avoid attracting special attention. At certain restaurants an effort is made to compel all guests to wear evening dress. This is merely copying an English fashion ill-suited to a democratic country. At the Hotel Savoy in London they enforce such a rule. An American lady who had reached the half-century limit, and did not care to appear in public in a low-necked dress, went not long ago to the restaurant there with a party of young friends. She wore a new and expensive Paris dress and her handsomest jewels. The young people were all in evening dress, but because the chaperon did not have on a décolleté gown they were refused admission to the restaurant, and were obliged to content themselves with dining in the grill-room! At the best hotels in New York, such as Delmonico’s, the Astor, and the Plaza, ladies may wear costumes with hats or full evening dress, as they find most convenient. For afternoon dances at hotels and roof-gardens, men usually come in business suits. After six o’clock evening dress is the proper costume. The dinner-jacket, or informal evening dress, as it may be called, is often worn for dancing at roof-gardens, because it is more comfortable than the long-tailed dress-coat. It is also used for unceremonious occasions at hotels and restaurants, as it would be elsewhere (see Chapters IV and XII).