The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-10-27
POINTS ABOUT DRESS.
Some Interesting Gossip About a Re
rnarkable Convention.
From the New York sun.


From the Ne,u York sun.
Annie Jenness Miller, who talked to the
temperance convention about "How to
Dress. doesn't believe in the bustle She
calls it "that wretched hump and says:
IF it weren't the fashion, every woman
whom nature might endow with it would
travel the world over to find a surgeon
skilled enough to cut it of" There We're
over 900 people in the Metropolitan opera
house the night she spoke, and most of
them were gentlewomen who pay some
attention to tteir gowns. But there
wasn't one who could have stood on the
platform and compared favorably with
Mrs. Miller. Frances Willard and many
others would have compared favorably
in respect of artistic drapery and chaste
style. but not woman in the house had on
a gown of such rich material. 1t was just
the thing for Mrs. Miller to have put on
magnificent dress for the evening. She
was there to lecture on the subject, and it
was fit that she should illustrate in her per-
son the principles she enunciated. Her
figure is tail and slender, and she has fair,
fresh. well-featured face, with hair dressed
somewhat after the fashion you may see in
pictures of ancient Greek maidens. In the
setting that the women and the gay banners
and the flowers and the flags made on the
opera house stage Mrs Miller made a
picture of handsome woman perfectly
clad 1t was something for an artist to
look upon.
IsMrs.s Miller doesn't wear corsets. She
never had them on except once, when she
wore them for week, and that experience,
she declares, made her sick nearly unto
death. II took them of, she related, "be-
cause | thought that would die if l wore
them longer" Then she went into a close
discussion of the reasons why the ligatures
AID combining bands of woman's dress
should be abolished. She said "If you
put men into woman's dress as it now is
they would become gibbering idiots in ten
years. That called out a hearty laugh,
and Immediately she went on: But we
don't want the mems dress. Our object in
dress reform is not to gain for ourselves this
privilege of wearing the garments that clOthe
the;Ene her extremIties of man. We do
believe however, in the divided skirt-pot
the divided skirt to be seen, but the divided
skirt which shall be worn instead of the
petticoat. The petticoat ought not to be
tolerated. do not own one, and have not
for wears" Then she said that she dressed
herself after her own preaching, and, draw
idg herself up in a queenly way, she added,
81 am dressed that way now" Su ely her
black and white embossed velvet princess
dress did fall most gracefully about her,
ana Jn6Tb WASH u any WTluhi6 Vi lullI6So VI
unevenneSs, such as pettcOats and ccrSets
make in the gowns of most women.
There has been an opportunity for an in
teresting study of dress In the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union convention.
The other day, down in one Of the front
rows, there was noticeable a sweet-faced
Quaker. She had on the stiff bonnet made
in the same style that her mother and
grandmother and all her maternal auces-
oh -, hot ~ ha1
Her gown was cut severely plain; there was
a bit Of white around her thro t and she
wore long cloak that would seem awfully
questionable on Madison avenue. All her
clothes were black. By her side sat a sister
Friend, clad Just like the other, except that
she wore a sealskin cloak. This is some
thing of an innovation for member of the
Societysof Friends, and to one long ac-
customed to see crowds of Quakers in Phila-
delphia and its suburbs it seemed decidedly
strange.
Four rows Of seats to the front of the two
Quakers there was a costume that con-
trasted strangely with theirs. The wearer
was a pretty faced young woman, with
sparkling eyes and laughing month. Her
head was covered with a Tam O. Shanter
cap of black cloth, and around her neck
was broad scarf of terra Gotta silk tied in
front in a big and puffy bow that half COW
cred her breast. Her dress was of light
cloth, in color like the white sand of the
seashore 1t was all this shade on the bosom,
where it was cut so that two folds crossed
each other like the letter X The back was
made Of cloth of the same color plaided
with broad stripes of sea blue. There were
a few pleats up the back, and around the
fair young christian temperance girls waist
there ran a rather loose belt of cloth a little
darker than the sea shore sand. The skirt
was full and flowing and of the same kind
as that on the back. All around it ran fine
horizontal bars of blue. When this daz-
zling woman went out she threw over her
shoulders a short loose wrap, whose colors
seemed a mingling CT a tennis blazer aud
Turkish rug.
H. Between this extreme of the girl In this
rather BIZARRE costume and the other ex-
treme of the severely plain Quaker women,
there were all sorts of styles of dress fur
nished by the thousands of women who
thronged the opera house. If any one thing
proved the wide scope of the membership
Of the w c. T. u this VARYING kind of