Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-11-09
RIDICULOUS FASHIONS IN DRESS.

The tall hat of civilized life appears to
DIR. Alfred Carpenter monstresity. 1t
is by universal consent neither beautiful
nor pleasant. Boots are made on the
theory that their first duty is to disguise
and misrepresent the contour of the foot.
In feminine dress garments are loose where
they should be tight, and tight where they
should be loose. Places are protected
which would be better without any pro-
lection, and others left unguarded which
need 1t most. Materials are selected with
out any relation to fitness for the office
they have to fill. If the external surface
be appropriate, lining is commonly ap-
pended which spoils its whole use. The
animal, vegetable and mineral worlds have
been liberal in exquisite dyes for the EN-.
Enlistment of human clothing. Yet the
wearers connive gladly at the superfiuous
employment by manufacturers of active
polsons. DR.. Carpenter is as disdainful OF
the taste of the fabrics in which his con.
temporaries inclose themselves as Of their
wholesomeness. They contravene thelines OF
true beauty, in his Judgment, as criminally
as they violate correct salutary principles.
There is some consolation in the advant.
ages the present generation possesses over
more than one of its predecessors in these
matters. Gentlemen of position are no
longer required to shave their heads in
order to make room for wig. They have
escaped from powder. They are not
obliged to put on clothes so uncompromis.
ing that their owners, it is recorded, were
forced to have themselves dropped into
them from hight. They no longer spend
fifty or a hundred guineas on single
gorgeous suit. The silk hat, if uglier, is
cheaper and handler than the courtly
beaver of the days of George Ill. and the
Prince Regent. Masculine attire is easier
and less painful than formerly. So little
does it vary that it is permissible to drop
out OF the fashion without being fagrantly
ridiculous. 1t is cheap and unostentatious.
For men, however, there remain many
points of costume to which usage alone
and aversion for the trouble of change
can reconcile the mind. Intrinsically
there can be nothing more absurd than
the whole apparatus of rigid collars and
neckties. 0nly the clergy as yet have
had the courage to emancipate themselves
3 from the servirude of stiff hats.
Than evening dress never was any
greater travesty of elegance and congruity
invented. Though young boys ought to
erer of knickerbockers, their seniors in
solemn steeples, and useless jackets, and
suttocating collars, continue to enjoy in
their dress not much more freedom than
herald In his tabsrd. Women have but
begun to mediate on enfranchisement from
dress as ungraceful as it is inappropriate.
Men. if their =elething is almost as gro.
tesque as ever, have at least delivered
themselves from the obligation of perpetual
change. Women wander, as of old, from
one ugly fashion TO another as ugly, the
slaves of ingenious and restless milliners.
a test of the merits of each modification is
the astonished mockery it encounters from
the disciples of its successor. Awkward
and extravagant as fashion may be de-
clared by posterity, for women there is nc.
security that it will not return. -ByN
happy chance they have been saved ST late
from some remarkable deformities above
and around them, devised blythe imagina
tions OF dressmakers ana>hairdressers. But
nobody can say bow long the interregnum
81 may last. II London Times.