The Othello of my picture is wearing a dress of thick woollen fabric in deep cream tone; his head is bound with a white turban, in which greenly glistens a huge emerald, emeralds being embroidered on the sleeves interspersed with a design of red silk; and there are jewels of all colours encrusted in his sword-belt, and his sash is of red cashmere fringed with red and green. It is invidious to make comparisons--I have heard this for many years, and known it even longer--yet I would boldly declare that there are but few ladies upon the stage who understand the important fact that, by the dressing of the hair and the decoration of the head, they may make or mar the most gorgeous or most simple garment. Miss Ellen Terry and Mrs. Tree share a talent for historical head-dressing, whilst of the younger generation Miss Dorothea Baird and Miss Lily Brayton most justly deserve the palm of excellence for the way they express their sense of period in the arrangement of their tresses, and will dismiss all hankerings after the merely becoming in the higher interests of the entirely appropriate. [Illustration: OTHELLO.] [Illustration: VÉRONIQUE.] The most interesting actresses of to-day make a cult of costume, and are ever ready with views, theories, and even predilections. Miss Irene Vanbrugh, for example, who, with her sister, Miss Violet Vanbrugh, would seem to interpret all that is fashionable on the stage, and to speak materially the last word of modern style, quite unlike Miss Baird, who pleads for the lines of nature and would kill fashion, frankly declares her favourite stage costume was the kimono in which she played that exciting scene in _The Gay Lord Quex_. Her experience of the crinoline period in _Trelawny of the Wells_, with the frilled skirts, pork-pie hats, and the hair-nets, led Miss Vanbrugh to be thankful that in real life she had escaped fashions "so detestably uncomfortable." Another typically elegant actress is Miss Ellis Jeffries, and her personal taste inclines towards the plainest and simplest costumes, as she told me, while adding, "Of course you won't believe me, but it's true. I choose my frocks to suit my circumstances on the stage, and also to some extent the emotions I have to express; and I insisted, in spite of criticism, that, when I had to play the part of an hysterical woman, I should robe her in scarlet. I felt I couldn't be hysterical in white muslin; could you?"