Ann Taylor offered prim dresses and costume-jewelry pearls.

Then there's Alice, who is right out of "Desperate Housewives," a bustling, repressed homemaker, in a prim flowered dress and a starched apron.

As it lit up the gaunt, beaky figure within, clad in a long, prim black dress, began to move.

One photograph in particular drew his eye: a young woman out of place in a prim black dress with a white Peter Pan collar and cuffs.

Surrounded by muscular guards and dozens of photographers, Ms. Stone, wearing a prim, high-necked gray dress, responded in French.

(Well, maybe not the over-the-elbow kid gloves, shown with prim little sleeveless dresses, but certainly the Chanel dresses themselves.)

Nevertheless she arrived after a day, reaching the college in fair order, though her prim traveling dress was dusted with grime.

There was an old lady with snow-white hair and a prim, neat dress, its collar coming up high at her throat to hide the ravages of age upon the human body.

Even in the simple, rather prim dress, she still had an unsettling effect on Will.

Waiters in screeching-red blazers are urbane and vigilant; waitresses in prim black dresses with white bonnets look as if they just emerged from an Amish prayer meeting.