The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1868-07-24
Freaks of Female Fashion.
From the London Saturday Review,

The one great prOblemin w0mens dress,
how to unite artificial elegance with natural
laws, is still unsolved, and seems likely to
remain so for some time longer. As soon
as fashion looks like coming nearit, and
We are close upon getting the right kind of
thing, VIC are all at once whisked off again
into some obsolete monstrosity or absurd
exaggeration, and landed as far as even
from the solution. Working from models
mite centre or principle, and therefore aim
ing at nothing certain, women and the
dressmakers cannot let their chance we'll
alone. Even when these last have struck
out useful and becoming costume, and
we are agreeably surprised at the sudden
cessation of some horrible annoyance, and
the no less sudden influx OF pretty girls in
our parks and streets, they have not the
slightest idea OF letting the masculine world
enjoy its good fortune in peace.
For six months at the longest the shape
holds its ground, and then is shelved to
make way for something perhaps just as
ugly and ridiculous as this had been sensi-
BILE and becoming. But women do not see
the ugliness of any fashion or, if they see
1T, they do not care for it, and certainly
they do not care for any inconvenience to
which the mode condemns themselves or
others. Not what the fashion is, but what
is the fashion, is the only question that
affects them and whether it is spoon
bonnet towering like an architectural
structure above the brow, or one of the
present vanishing trihes, all but lost among
the masses of fuzzy hair that stick out here
and tumble about everywhere, it is all the
same to them, provided it is the thing of
the day. Ii the ruling dressmaker of the
hour says that such and such thing shall
be worn for the season, straightway it is
worn, though it may be the ugliest bit of
Disagreement that ever lesscned the beau
ty OF a pretty woman, or increased the
nominees of plain one. For it is the
miliners and manufacturers who make the
fashions; and, when ladies think they are
setting the fashion, they are only following
in the course which the Manchester people,
the Glasgow people, and the wholesale
houses in the city, and the head milliners
at the West End have already mark ed out
for them. If the ''dress piece weayers'
decide that "self colors" sha go on and
stripes come in, not woman thinks life
worth having without gown to make her
like one of Grandville's zebras. One year
she breaks out into an eruption of spots
another, she covers herself with decapitated
dogs heads; a third, she wears stuff
with Brobdingnagian pattern, allowing
about two flowers and a half in the gown
fourth, she scores herself with crossbars;
but every year it issimply the taste of the
weaver in the beginning, with the fine la
dies following like sheep as they are led,
and, between weaver and dressmaker, with-
out an idea to call their own.
All the fashions of a given period have
certain seal and stamp special to them
selves. Sometimes it is in gorgeousness of
decor alton, as in the fifteenth aud sixteenth
centuries, when the customers highest eff
forts of art were lavished on cloth of gold
and Jeweled broldery, and as is the case all
through the east at the present day.
Sometimes it is in sweeping length of line,
as in the days when sleeves and skirts were
knotted up to keep them from the
wearer's feet, and when monks preached to
their fair hearers Of the sin of luxury, and
Mortified them by saying how they saw the
devil, In his own person, squattlng on their
trains at mass, or perched upon the horns
which were held to represent the seven
deadly sins, without one redeemiug virtue.
Sometimes it is In extreme simplicity, as in
the time of the French Jacobins, and of
the early Greeks, whom they copied. And
sometimes, as at this present moment, it is
an oddlty, IN the widest extremes, and the
most startling changes alphabetically, we
DO not know what day may bring forth in
the way of toilet. When we go to bed we
leave our wives and daughters in huge,
bell. shaped crinolines, breaking jugs, up
setting chairs, damaging their male neigh
bors shins, and showing their own legs
with liberality of which the funniest
thing Is that every woman sees and depre-
Gates the same display in others, but ig-
nores it stoutly for herself when we wake
up the next morning they are in narrow
close. fitting garments, like spill boxes in
stead of bells. One day they have trains
eddylng around their feet like ghosts gar
ments, the next they are in scanty custome
dresses more like pillow-cas than conven-
tlonal gowns. One day they have huge
Happlng hats that overshadow the Shout
ders, the next little ''porridge plates that
do not come beyond the line of hair. Now
they let their tresses meander in greasy
llnglets OF the corkscrew shape, or hang in
a heavy, smooth, and shining roll half way
down their necks, and modelline aud mae
assar make a mans fortune out of hand
aid now they puff it out in big cushions on
the top of their heads, and resort to arti
fetal means to make it crinkly, dry, and
absolutely without gloss. The whole fun
of the thing seems to be in the suddenness
of transition from one extreme to anotner
effected before the eye has had time to
grow accustomed to the change :, so that
the bell and the spill box, the Japanese.
looking lady with yards of material en-
tanghng her feet or sweeping in the dust
behind her, and the lady in short clothes,
like a great schoolgirl who has outgrown
her frocks, meet in the same room aad los
tie one another in the streets, to the utter
confusion OF anything like harmony Of ma
tlonal appearance.
Good Joke.