News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1890-03-13
WHO SETS FASHIONS?
A CELEBRATED FRENCH AC-
TRESS SAYS THE STAGE DOES.
The French Capital Still Leads the
World in Women's Dress.


World in Womens Dress.
Although France, since the wa, has
been without splendid and luxurious
court, there has been probably as much
splendor, luxury, elegance and taste in
the highest Partisan society as ever
there was in the palmiest days of the
Second Empire. Fashion still reigns
supreme in spite of the overturned
thrones, and the god has not one in
slant relinguished his prerogatives,
however madly the people play at bat
and ball with crowns and sceptres.
Among the Monarchs of Europe
there is one whose throne never totters,
whose sceptered sway is never dis
puted, whose crown is as fixed as the
top of Mont Blanc, and whose subjects
are eternally loyal, devoted, and sub
missive, that is to say, his or her Ma
jesty the Partisan dressmaker. The
couturiere of Lutetia, as matter of
millinery fact, makes laws for the
civilized society of the world. Ameri-
ca comes to her to pay homage and
Sc k for inspiration. Old England has
for years been absolutely led by her
dictates, and is obedient to the laws
and commands by which she says, ''Of
this shape, and no other, shall be thy
rotonde, thy bonnet, thy mantelet,
thy wrap or sortie de bal; and thus
far and no further shall come thy cor
sage, thy basque, or thy peleTine."
Indeed, the supremacy of the French
dressmaker is as absolute as the laws
of the Modes and Persians, and as un-
aeniable as pros4Siss-lge.Srl.
l have often heard it said that, in
the days of Napoleon Ill, the Empress
was the undoubted leader of fashion
and taste. Now, without wishing to
say anything derogatory, L think there
must be some mistake in such state
ment, as it might with truth be asked
-''Who, then, took the Empress's
place, when events made of Frances
unfortunate arbitress in dress politi-
cal refugee?" Certainly not Mime.
Grevy, who was anything but lady
of fashion; and there was no Nine.
Gambetta at all.
The fact is that the Empress, like
every other lady in the land, f. llowed
the fashions which had been set by
others. Fashions edicts were promul-
gated in the official gazettes of the
''modes," and they were obeyed as i'm
plicitly at the Tuileries and in the Fau-
bourg, and eventually in England and
in the United States, as everywhere, as
they are now, when there is no En-
NH in Fran nd Tril 10
only thing of the past.
Who, then, sets the fashions?
From my own experience l think the
theatre has a great deal more to do
with it than any one thing else in the
world.
QUEEN MARIE ANToINETTE.
In the first place, there were no
fashions to speak of in France before
Louis XIV, when Moliere in reality
first peopIed the stage. The rage for
ircessant changes in dress is of still
more recent growth. 1t dates in all
its frivolous absurdity from the reign
of Queen Marie Antoinette. Until
her advent the fashions in dress
changed but slowly at the Court of
France. Anyone knows at a glance
the costume of Marie de Medicis, no
matter at what period of her life it
may have been worn. The great |
ladies in those days had many dresses,
no doubt, and rich ones too; but the |
cut of them remained unaltered for |
years. Young ladies, in fact, were re-
ceived at Court quite suitably attired |
in the wedding gowns of their mothers
and grandmothers.
Maria Antoinette, however, soon
all this. She modified the
stytle of her own dresses so often that
the ladies of the Court were bewilder-
ed by her vagaries. Her whims were
initiated by few ladies of the Court. |
The Princess de Lamballe and Nine. |
de Polignac distinguished themselves
by the fiattering completeness of their
imitation. Many, however, held |
aloof, and always appeared clad in
the old brocades of the early half of |
the last century; while the mass of the |
feminine population remained utterly |
to the changes of fashion
which were displayed at Court.
| may here state that the Queen was
a slave to her dressmaker, Mile. Ber-
tin. When Marie Anto; nette entered |
Paris in 1879, Mile. Berlin placed her.
self, with thirty of her work-women,
conspicuously at her balcony. The |
Queen, as she passed, was pleased to |
wave her hand, and exclaimed:
s'There is Mile. Berlin pa favour the |
milliner acknowledged by most OBJ
sequious curtesy. However the Kings |
good sense may have been ruffied at
the thought that the Queens first atten-
ton at his entrance into Paris was paid /
to her dressmaker, his majesty hum
CURED the joke so far as to applaud by |
beating his ands, which entailed |
another deep obeisance on the part of
the needie-woman.
Then, one after ano her, the whole |
of the members of the Royal Family |
followed the example set by the King
and the Queen, to which curtsey after
curtsey was ende ed from the balcony. |
But the courtiers in their turn, like |
true apes, took up the cue from their
august masters; and after these again, |
the entire retinue of satellites, officers,
squires, cadets, tigers, and retainers-
a procession upwards of a mile long
to each and all of whom the unfortu-
nate woman had to bow in succession,
until, exhausted with 50 much honor
and glory, she finally curtseyed herself
into a swoon, falling like spent flow
er into the arms of her thirty attend
ant nymphs.
THE COURT NILLINER.
Such public attention OH the part of
r )yalty of course made Mile. Bertin's
fortune She became the fashionable
marchande de modes.
ACTRESSES LEAD THE FASHION.
Popular acti esses have always proved
the most immediate and the most pow
erful inculcators of fashion. The in
comparable Vestris "set" at least
dozen "modes." The patterns of her
dresses, her coiffures, her hose, and
slippers, were enthusiastically copied.
The exquiAitely sim lie but beauteous
costume of Ginlia Grisi, in Norma, in
cited the fashionable world during an
entire season to appear at balls and as
semblies in the snowy robes of Dru-
Ideal priestesses, and, for time,
sickles were carried instead of fans.
To come to our own times, the
dresses in FI'Ou-FlOu took all the town
by storm, as those in La FamiUe Be
notion had done few years before;
popular actress made fashionable the