New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1871-07-23
DEMOCRACY IN DRESS.


has been an interregnum in the empire of
fashion, during which the women of the
United States have been in doubt as to
the authority to which their allegiance
was due. The venerable phrase, sit is
the fashion, has still, however, exercised
its wonted sway, although nobody was
able to say by what authority the fashion
was set. This uncertainty still prevails,
and there are not few radicals in dress
who irreverently propose to seize this OPP
portunity to throw off the yoke of fashion
altogether, and establish democracy in
dress, wherein each woman shall robe
herself according to her individual TASTE
consulting simply the proprieties of age
means and personal appearance. This is
no revival of the Bloomer movement,
that of fashion, inasmuch as it dictated
certain costume for all, regardless of indi-
vidual peculiarities, and as, moreover
that costume was one in which beauty
was ignored. Now, beauty is in fact the
main thing to be studied after the re-
quirements of decency are Satisfied; and
the mistake of fashion in this respect is
to consult but one element of beauty
namely, variety. To be constantly bring
ing forward something new, whether an
improvement upon the old or not, that
has been the chief end of the capricious
despot to whose ukases the majority of
women submit implicitly. Even those
who see the faults of the new fashion can
point out plainly wherein it violates taste,
is inartistic and ungraceful-ev these,
after time, yield their private judgment
to the omnipotence of "the mode, and
reluctantly fall into the uniformed ranks,
usually just as the style is about to take a
new form.
This subservience on the part of SEN
sible women is the more absurd because,
as general rule all remarkable fashions
have been expedients of some woman of
courtly rank to conceal personal defect
or display personal beauty, and the alb
iect followers of it are often doomed to
produce results directly opposite. Thus
Elizabeth of England was disfgured by
scar on her throat, to conceal which she
wore an enormous starched ruff. This
stiff and absurd fashion, which must have
interfered with the movement of the head,
became the prevailing style, and many
woman with faultless throat was foolish
enough to adopt it, among others the
beautiful Mary, Queen of Scots.
Again, the Duchess of Pompadour,
daughter of a butcher and mistress of
Louis Fifteenth, was blest by nature with
an ample bust, which she scrupled not to
display to the public gaze by those square
cut waists which bear her name. Some
broad-breasted French woman of modern
times has revived this fashion, which is
very trying except to such; and accord
ingly, in spite of its unbecomingness,
hundreds of modest and narrow-chested
American girls, learning from their dress
maker or the fashion books that the ''cor-
sage Ia Ponlpadoau'' was the latest style,
have unblushingly disclosed to the eyes
of society their paucity of bosom and
plentiness of bone, satisfying their
aesthetic scruples, if they have any, with
the foolish adage sit is better to be out of
the world than out of the fashion"
For an example of another absurdity of
this tickle goddess look at the changes
which have taken place within the last
few years in the method Of dressing the
hair. Three years ago, what ladies call
their 'back hair was drawn on top of the
head so far as to encroach upon their
''front hair, and, of course, hats and
bonnets were made to correspond. The
former rested not gracefully upon the
nose, and the latter consisted of strip of
gauze or velvet two inches wide, reposing
ON the forehead. Further back it could
not go, on account of the salient ''back
hair" A reaction has since taken place,
front hair, which has already dethroned
the tyrannical hinder locks and sent them
struggling in tangled confusion down the
shoulders Neither style serves the legi-
innate purpose Of couture, which is to
SO arrange the hair as to display at once
It's beauty and the shape of the head on
which it is supposed to grow, while, at
the same time, it shall not seem to incom-
mode the wearer. In other words, the hair
ought to be an appendage to the head, not
the head block upon which to display the
hair. Nevertheless the ''coifure a la block
head" is the very height of the mode and a
lady with only her own hair, no matter
how abundant that may be, feels ssnaked"
$50 we are told), and dares not appear in