The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-02-09
DUDES IN A FLUTTER.
,,,av Are Agitated over the Question
of shiny Shirt rOnVs'
From the Philadelphia Nees,

From the PHILADELPHIA Ne,cs
,,ol,ar CITY dudes are i'll great state OF
'sd Their chests are agtated by grave
~ ~ nomentous question. This tits; Shall
hoson,s of their full dress shirts be
- or dead white. For years the beaux
e 81 p,nsdelphia-and there have been many
IS them. of whom the late Count" White
.os h,rt one handsome eXample--have worn
,tair linen lustrelesS or as brllllanu as poi
trad marble. lust as individual taste might
I sn.a But' presto! of a sudden the mat
se3os arisen TO almost the dignity Of II
p,+;nie of faith, and since there Is so much
s;sDnte fashion will presently be turning its
N,6s--or rather its ealS-to some social hlSn
,,riest for definition g.
fashion is already divided into "Shiners"
.rd "anti-shiners," with few conservative
o., neace-at-any price, people, who are anna
XIV disposed to let every one 90 as he pleaSes
;+b his bosoms so long as they are not
,lasteJ speckled, "piqued" or embroidered.
Eran tbe women have become interested
nd Iuncheons and afternoon teas ring with
tbe question: What sort OF shirt does your
husband wearF
A. a bazaar given last week for the bene-
g. If an art school two young women, fol-
loving the example in another case of the
ia Rival Queens of Philadelphia fashion,
undertook
tbe dead whiten bosomed male hosts. The
endeavor was perhaps not SO successful there
- ~ n,lCht have been under different cir
,,,mstances. For all the girls in the show
we're extremely pretty and Drumming over
With enterprise, and the zeal with which
thew offered china dolls and bottles of pickles
III immense prices to moneyed youth IRE
snective of the style of shirt bosom was a
canton to snakes, and led to the abandon
49,, schay11a of the division into San
crate companies. each under an amazonian
loader For. alas! the division showed too
nlsinly what a vast array of fashionable
TTouths must have remained away from the
bazar.
But, though the plan failed there, the
Young ladies insist on being permitted to
carry it out as opportunities offer, during
the winter Indeed, 1t is sand That one or
the queens, who is to give dance in few
weeks. has instructed her stationer to add
10 the lower left hand corner of her cards
of invitation the commanding words, POL
ished linen de rigeur." OF course, her ri
val when her turn for an evening rout
comes round, will be justified in informing
those whom she bids to the dance that Dead
white bosoms only are tolerable in truly re-
fined society"
Philosophy, too, naturally enough has
been evolved by the yard out of this dis
pute To the cry of dead whites" that
Shiny bosoms are vulgar the shines answer
that dead white is only symptom of An
gomania The shiny bosom is above and
beyond all things an American institution, y
though primarily, perhaps, the United
States is indebted for it to John Chinaman.
The English, says the ''shiners," never bav-
ing learned the secret of SO preparing the
starch that a good iron would make a
shirt bosom shine like a headstone on a
frosty night have calmly set down
the result of Americas enterprise as bad
form
Anglomaniacs have caught up the sheer
without approaching the philosophy. The
advocates of the dead whites" meet such
arguments with the freezing, not to say
plying, silence with which high breeding
usually greets the observations of the i'm
pulsve, but not finely cultured mob The
main difficulty, of course, connected with
the solution of the problem, whose impor-
lance is so manifest to Philadelphia society,
lies in the circumstance that it has been
found almost impossible to settle upon an
arbter, or perhaps one would say dictator
for S CHI matters in America.