The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1880-10-22
How English and American Women
Follow the Dictates Of Paris.


WHEN Paris starts . fashion, the
milliners of all civilized countries are
ready to import it all over Europe and
America But on us English we do not
think French inventions sit with much
grace. We are too different from the
French to adapt with any success the
style which best suits them. The En-
glish character and mind being, as
compared with the French, simple.
vague and slow; imaginative rather
than fanciful; constant and stable in
feeling rather than quickly sympa-
thetic; proud. rather vain, and, though
proud, decidedly more modest and less
self-confdent than the French, we in
vent when we do exert ourselves, and
push out our creative faculties on en-
tirely different lines, so to speak, from
those on which the French invent; but
too often cur modesty, vagueness, sim
plicity and slowness acting together,
ensnare us into an undue admiration of
q French quality or achievement. for
the very reason that we do not possess
the one and cannot readily accomplish
the other. French vanity, on the con-
trary, as rule admires French quail
ties and French; ACHE yements because
they are French. We are apt to sur
render our National taste, not because
the taste we adopt is superior, but be-
cause the weak side of our simplicity
is deluded into believing theoretically
in the taste which thinks so much OF
itself. That we are not discriminating
in the manner in which we follow
French fashions is shown by the fact
that we do not copy what is really adj
mirable in their work, and that we ex-
aggerate almost to distortion the most
fantastic inventions in French dress.
Many Paris milliner will keep an
outre form of the fashions for her En-
glish and American customers, and we
in England often initiate the frills and
furbefOws of French trimmings, but we
do not make a point of initiating the
neatness and perfection of the work,
nor are we clever in fitting the wearing
of the garment appropriately to the oc-
casion, so that often we see an idea
which starts from the Paris milliner in
the form of an elaborate and artful
piece of needlework swept about dirty
London streets in slovenlv, untidy
form. Probably our power of perfect
ing the details of dress will always fail
as long as we initiate another Nations
inventions for the same reason that in
higher kinds of art it is so rare to find
copyist of any work of art capable of
rendering even the most technical
qualities of finish with real skill of elab-
Grafton, the interest felt by the inventor
himself being the only power sufficient
ly strong to inspire the patience and
ability necessary for perfect complete
ness in the detail. But we believe that
were we to sharpen our inventive quail
tiles and overcome the vagueness
which results in an indiscriminate fol-
lowing of fashions which in no way fit
into our National characteristics, weav-
ing into such inventions better side of
our modesty and simplicity than we
have shown in doing more than justice
to another Nations taste, we might
achieve the invention of costumes at
once beautiful and English in charac-
ter.-LondOn Spectator.