The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1874-05-14
Useless Elaboration in Dress.

4 writer in the New York Mail gives
the following excellent advice TO the
women who need it: In the old days OF
hand sewing how pathetically women
used TO bemOan their fateS! Then the
sewing machine came in, rs if it Were the
I herald of the millennium. There were
never to be any more songs of the shirt.
/ All the sewing was to be done up, in an
emergency, by that good Fairy of the
| Household, in a trice, before you could
snap your fingers and say Jack Robinson.
/ Oh, what oceans of time women were go
/ ing to have for every conceivable project
under the sun! But straightway they
wheeled around, and almost turned the
/ blessing into curse. Instead of doing rs
I they had promised to do, getting through
/ the sewing and having time for other
| things, they used sewing machines to turn
every article of dress into amass of unheard
of elaboration. What miles of braiding
and yards of tucking and forests of tiounc-
/ ing the sewing machine is responsible for
1t is responsible, too, for the elabOrateness
of style, finish. and ornament which has
distinguished the fashions since its advent.
| To it we owe the utter extinction of sim
plieity i'm feminine dress. 1t was so easy
J to make up a simple dress upon il like
L
| the needle, in a very short time, that the
! temptation to put on few folds of ruifles
was not to be resisted by any woman of
artistic tendencies-and that means
ninety-nine women out of evtry hundred,
for they are nearly all born with more or
! less of the artistic instinct for adorning
and beautitying-and this trait of feminine
character, for lack of proper training and
proper channels of outlet, becomes in
woman one of the faults when it should
have been one of her virtues.
Now, the curse of the day is the burden
ing OF all feminine clothing with Il mass
of surplus ornamentatiOn which costs the
life and health of woman, and is death to
all her higher mental aspirations. If the
sewing machine were used as originally
intended-as helper to work Off all the
sewing of the week in a few hours, then il
would indeed be a blessing. Why not make
it so? Why not take new departure?
Why not decree such fashions in outside
dress as will enable any woman to make
new one entire within a few hours from
the time she buys the material and the
pattern, or to have it done within that time
by somebody else? In either ease the saw
ing would be immense in every way. The
same rule could be adopted for all inner
garments. anu tlldJ ulNlSlO1 Ol ilc NdIu-
robe which comes under the head of - lin
gerie.r mean that all of them could be
divested of most of their SuperfluOus rufileS
and trimmings, and at the same time gain
immensely in strictly artistic beauty. 1t
was with the immenSity Ofruflies on wash
goods that those terrible . laundresS bills"
came in. Had it not been for the sewing
machine enabling a woman to tlOunce a
Victoria lawn to the waist, she would not
now have to pay s. or $40 to get it prop
crly done up. After all, it is the talSest of
economy, as it is the worst Oftaste. to hide
a garment i'm forest of rutfling, because it
is so easy to put it on with the sewing
machine, in soOth. But" says some
body, Z" you'll take the bread out of the
mouths of hundreds and thousands of sew
ing machine operators and laundresseS If
you do anything like this" Indeed? |
thought women wanted to go up higher in
the professions. and not be hewers ofwOod
and drawers of water forever, 1t is urged
that there are many healthier and more re-
munerative occupations. now mostly mo-
nOpOliZed by men, Just as suitable to them
as the above named ones. If women have
to be driven into them, it is their own
fault, and we are certainly not bound to
keep up a wrong state of things by which
a whole community suffers, for the sake
of any particular class or guild in 1t. IT
sewing machines are ever to fulfil their
legitimate aim of labOr-saving inventiOns,
there must be less call for sewing-wOmen
and special laundreSses.