Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-06-15
COMFORT AND DRESS.
The. Former Has Very Little or
Nothing to Do With the Latter.
A PLEA FOR THE SHORT SKIRT.
Men Long Ago Discarded the Toga for
Common Sense Costumes.
THE REIGN OF THE sTOVE-PIPE HAT
WRITTEN FOR THE pIsPArcH.1


dress of women is becoming masculine. The
girls are beginning to wear shirt fronts, and
high collars, and four-in-hand ties, and soft
hats. They have even got so far as to wear
flannel blouse shirts, and seem to have dis
covered there is special comfort in them,
and they hope the powers that be behind
the laws Of fashion will keep it up, and not
send them back to stiff stays, and furbelows,
and frills, and bustles, and big hoops.
Women realize how badly they need = re-
form in dress, but they also know deep
down in their souls that they will never
get it, unless that mysterious and domineer-
ing power of fashion so DEGREES. Not a day
passes that women do not feel that their
mode of dress is fetter upon freedom Of
action, a bar to comfort, a drag upon the
best performance of their work, whether in
the house, the Office, the store, the factory,
or any outdoor employment.
THE DRESS ON A RAINY DAY.
Nothing illustrates this so finely as a
rainy day, when every woman who has to
go out to business may be seen elutching
her skirts out of the wet with one hand and
holding an umbrella with the other. When
she has packages or perchance a baby to
carry, the skirts have to simply 60 to dis
gusting drabble and dire destruction. A
more pathetic devotion to an unknown
power, or more abiect, slavish fear
of the mysterious Mrs. Crumbs, who
rules men and women alike, through terror
OF what people will say. is hardly to be wit
messed. The worst may be summed up in
the ruin of health that results in crowding
cemeteries with women, who, in sensible
;.bk ir
per.
Women of wealth escape most of the evils
BY riding in their carriages, and others by
staying at home when it rains. Men show
some sense in adopting their dress to their
work. Mill workers wear flannel shirts
and hob-nailed shoes, which experience has
dictated as the proper toggery for their busi-
ness; painters and toilers in greasy work.
shops don "overalls;" takers wear caps and
aprons to preserve the cleanliness of their
products; but it remains for women to
neglect all promptings of good sense
and wear long skirts in all conditions.
Fashion rules. If the Princess of Wales,
who has always a carriage at command, and
who need never go out in the rain or snow
unless she so desires, wears her dresses down
to the ground then every woman, from
DUCHESS TO DOMESTIC
wears the same. We all remember when
trained wrappers were in style that every
girl in the Kitchen was walloping around in
long trail at her daily work. For awhile
it seemed as if evolution, as law, had
brought short dresses into vogue, but,
alas. no, the whirligig of time has again
brought them to the ground, with the
usual result. that everybody falls in-al-
though many with sighs and groaus and
rf,,1 roaa b. -kaA ,<.I4 L..
il the Princess of Wales was not fool, and
if Sara Bernhardt ever had to walk to her
daily toll upon the stage.
Mrs. Jenness Miller and Lady Haberton
may talk until all is blue about dress re-
form, and divided skirts, and the abolition
of the corset, and all that, but unless they
can set the impress Of fashion upon their
ideas, they might as well talk to the wild
waves, or ask the torrents of Niagara to go
the other way. What they need to do to
carry their point of reform is to convert the
future Empress of India to their views, and
induce the demi monde of Paris and the stage
to conform to their notions. If the "beauti-
full Princess" or the ''divine Sara" could
be moved to cut two inches off their skirts
the whole earth would be made glad. II
they would take off four inches they would
be entitled to the thanksgivings of the
round world and all that dwell therein.
SHORT SKIRTS ARE PRETTY.
Many people will be shocked at the idea
of women wearing short skirts, but there is
nothing prettier on the stage, and were they
the fashion they would be voted lovely.
Nothing in the picture way is more hideous
than the hooped skirt instituted by Eugene,
Empress OF France, years ago-and yet,
when the great war was going on, one of the
trnu hloa in the h0anifala With raOayd 70
women as nurses was that they would wear
the balloon appendages even there.
All this shows the power of fashion-of
custom-of the reign of Mrs. Grundy. Men
discard silk hats because they are perhaps
an eighth Of an inch under or over the
fashion standard. They wear collars high
or low, as the style-not as com fort-directs.
The laws of etiquette DESTROY all soclability
because they dictate to man q dress which
he abominates, and to women an array
which she abhors. In "spike tail' and
low vest man is no less a man, but he
hates himself for fool, in thus arranging
himself in the waiter livery of society. In
. low-cut, long-trained evening gown a
woman feels she has conformed to the pro-
prieties and the etiquette of the occasion,
quirements that put stamp upon her
idlocy in doing what she knows is silly
and unwise, and dangerous to health.
DRESS ON THE BENCH.
Men generally wear trousers. The Judges
of the Supreme Court, in their official ca
pacity, wear handsome silk gowns, but if
condemned to the same on the street and
had to carry them up out of the mud and
rain, with umbrella in hand, they would
very likely swear and make an endeavor 10
secure a constitutional amendment or set
up q Supreme Court decision that would re-
suit in their abolition. But wo-
men have not as much independ-
ence as American judges. English
officials still wear the big wigs and
silk gowns of office in accordance with pre-
cedent and position, but just as good justice,
proper judgment and righteous administra-
ton of Office has been shown to the world
by judges in shabby frock coats or slop-shop
business suits.
The silliest of persons may show up best
in dress while the wisest may appear as
dowdies. As the world goes this is unfor-
tunate, as dress so often marks the man
and gauges him in the opinion of others.
Mans dress is large advance. as to COM
fort and convenience, from the togas
of the ancient Romans. Imagine the
working man of to-day going to his daily
toll of eight hours, say, in a crimson robe,
or an old blue gown down to his heels, and |
having to keep forever shufaing it up on |
the arms. Think of him plunging along
with dinner bucket and umbrella in either |
hand reaching madly Tor his skirts to keep
them out of the mud and wet. And yet our
working women are as far back in civiliza-
tion as to clothes as were the prophets and
fishermen of old as pictured for our edifca-