A new caprice in fashion is showing itself in New York. Wherever one goes one sees women dressed in black. This is not the small, regular propotion of women in mourning. On the contrary, it is composed of maids and matrons who look unusually cheerful and complacent : they are the first to gert into step with fashion, their styles are dashingly new, and they have been told that no shade is so becoming—has such “distinguishment”, as an advertisement happily words it. Besides, owing to that progress in wich all good moderns believe, the air in New York has become progressively dirtier, and non-committal color is, as they say, “most practical”. So for street wear especially, we have throngs of females black from head to foot. A number of the less adventurous, it may be said, have kept on a last year’s or last season’s colored hat. A number of the more adventurous have combined their black with white trimmings, so that they have the touch of piquancy which is considered so fascinating in a reviving widow. But all agree on the main note, the not of complete reserve, and abstinence, and decorum. After the wave of rust-color and the wave of green there comes this dignified abrogation. The youngster and the elderly woman seem to rejoice in it equally. It gives a note of elegance to the pocket-size shop-girl. It gives a notion of slimness to to the lady in quarto-size. On Fourteenth Street one meets it in cheap improvisation. One sees it on Park Avenue, stepping in conscious precision of fashion into, or out of a motor. It comes in polite demureness into a hotel restaurant. It goes in modest righteousness to the shopping district, or to tea. As it passes it murmurs, “ You unfortunately, are dressed in colors. Charming, but a little demodée! I am Black, misleading if you like, but inestimably correct. You gaze at me? Must you be so curious? But, if you must, I sustain your curiosity not without pleasure. As it happens, I am impeccable. Your only salvation is to study me and, I am afraid, to copy me. C’est tout. ” From the point of view of social curiosity, however, it isn’t quite all. Since black so strongly marks this heterogeneous crowd of young and old, pretty and not pretty, slim and fat, tall and short, rich and poor, intelligent and dull, the definite enslavement of womankind, or human kind, to fashion becomes too obtrusive not to exact some attention.