New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1866-06-26
COSTUME.

fall ladies were to fashion their apparel after
the sage advice aud bright suggestions of hus-
bands, brothers and male friends, they would pre-
sent about the funniest groups and compounds of
personal protective decoration the world has ever
seen and if they were to dispense with such
articles of dress as might be disspproved of by
these same masculine counsellors they would offer
8 spectacle still more extraordinary. In the first
case there would be as many styles as there are
advisers, transforming the whole sex into gro
tesque masqueraders in the second case the
result would be severe simplicity in style and q
dull neutrality in colors. In spite, however, of all
the adYicea and criticism they are obliged to hear,
women have always dressed according to their
tastes and notions, and it is quite probable that
they will continue to dress as their views of pro-
priety, comeliness and convenience may suggest.
Sometimes too close adherence to fashion pro-
duees individual cases of grotesque array, and
sometimes excessive ornamentation has results
both ridiculous and absurd but in the main the
intuitive tRste Of women guides them almost uner-
ringly. They love colors and readily learn that
art of blending them tremendously which is known
to most men only in its pleasing effects, Their
never oeasing desire to afford pleasure as well as
theirloye ofapprobation and admiration incie them
to study dress as an art, and to study it in some
instances with such cultivated and refined tastes,
and with such admirable results as to bring it
almost within the list of fne arts. Within most of
households the manufacture and arrangement of
articles of dress is the chief employment and the
subject Of almost continual care and thought.
Notwithstanding these qualifications, motives
and pains, female costume is made the very fire.
! IF nd al
happens, the less the writer knows of the matter
the more prone is he to express his opinions. The
remarks are usually accompanied by 3 straning at
wit, which seldom reaches beyond fippant imper-
Thence ana sometimes degonerates into indeli,
cacy We see no reason why paragraphs on
| female dress which man Of good taste could not
repeat to a sister, should figure in the columns Of
newspaper. If the editorial goosequill were in
the snowy hands OF the opposite gender it is quite
certain that fair and broad field Of retaliation
would be found in criticism upon masculine i" har-
ness and that the comments woald be quite as
sparkling quite instructive, quite as intelligent,
as those Of male critics on the costume Of females.
They would soon Offset what has been said about
hats hoops and waterfalls, by Illustrations Of the
comiCalides of male attire past and present. They
would expose all the mysteries Of the sartoria art
and turn the taior's miraculous transformations
into ridcule. They would Indicate in very deli
cate way how much of a modern dandy is The
work of nature and how much he owes to art.
| They would analyze him from the dome Of his pot
lid hat to the extrernites of his squaretoes, rem
dering passing tribute to paper collars truHcated
tunies fantastic wastcoats, expansive tsowsers,
1 pumpkin-colored gloves. sadde-bag whiskers, wire
moustaohe spottedneck-tie, fiddle, stick cane
and grasshopper- breastpn. They would create
g inextinguishabe laughter among their own sex
by describing Hannibal scaling the Alps in the cos
tune of a Partisan elegant, or Napoleon charging
at Lodi in peg-top pants Of subdued mouse
color, yellow kids and a straW-brinde monkey
jacket. Passing to an earlier era, they would
reyelin descriptions Of the well remembered &C.
centrieities of the period and trace male habili-
ments thence through an unYarying succession of
absurd and ungainly combinations of forms, back
to the time when the antique wig was more fan
tastically voluminous than the modern waterfall,
and when artificial engagements beneath the hose
were something more than myth. They would
shsw that, during the past three centuries, the
man of fashion has never been artistcally dressed
in point of looks, nor philosophicaly in point of
comfort They would show that male attire has
gone through a countless series OF changes, in no
stage becoming or graceful, with no approach to
the dignity of classic costume or to the flowing
elegance Of the comfort-loying 0rientals. They
would prove that male fashions were changes
without significance, which are followed without
reflection, and they would come very nigh to prov
ing that female changes of the mode are merely
notifications of the same changeless elements Of
the beautiful. Keenly sensible of tile deformity
produced by awkward dress, they would point it
out in all the successive styles" and at the same
time designate the opposite qualify in the preva-
lent patterns Of female costume. It would as
suredly improve each years predominant style if
men could see themselves in the bright mirror of
female criticism.