Originally Posted by TanyaL

For those of you who are too young to remember older rules of ettiquete, here are some memories of the hankerchief "rules".I remember that when a lady bought hankies she bought either ones for every day or ones for dressy occasions. Usually this meant that the everyday ones were made from printed fabric and the better ones were made from solid colored fabric and hand embroidered. Some of these were also edged with lace. There were black ones for funerals, and sometimes you could color-coordinate the hankie with your dress, but you seldom had one color of fabric and another color of lace. That was usually considered to be gaudy and not lady like. Frequently the hankies had your initial embroidered on one corner.
You did not use an everyday hankerchief in a dressy situation such as going to church on Sunday morning, and you did not put a white, lace edged hankerchief in your purse when you went to the grocery store. The rules of dress were as strict about the use of hankies as they were about your girdle and getting the seams of your hose straight in the back of your legs. Some things ladies did not do if they were proper ladies. These things were taught by mothers to their daughters and they were very important at the time. Not knowing these type of things could mark a young girl as cheap, and "from the wrong side of the tracks." Not someone a fellow took home to meet the family. It was a different time.