The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-08-25

Pardon dc Ploermel" nowadays there are
quite as many closely cropped rustics in
wideawakes and suits of ''dittoes'' as there
are peasants with the traditional flowing
locks and clad in the traditional broad
brimmed castors and voluminous g~alligas-
kills of the antique province.
The plain truth-and a very unpalatable
one it must be to artists n psychologists
and lovers of the romantio-is that pictur-
esque costume is rapidly dying out, the
whole world over. 1t is. We hope, j%ustiia-
BILE to apply such an epithst as pic
, whioS mode so humanity 1ns &Ds sssa. G ia
such a desperate hurry to get rid; since it
passes conception that postsrity will be
able to recognize anything tasteful or any
thing that is even tolerably attractive in
the costume worn III Christendom by the
masses during the last decade in the nine
tenth century. OF that posterity the YER
dict will probably bo that the attire of men
in every GLASS of society was distressinRly
ugly, and that although female costume
rivaled in richness, beauty and elegance the
comelier of the medieval habits figured in
the works of Cesare V~eoellio and Jost AM
man, the materials used by the bellies of the
Victorian era were so costly and the charges
for dressmaking SO heavy that only a rela-
tively small proportion Of the population
could afford to be handsomely and artistic
ally dressed. There is plenty of cheap fin.
cry to be had; but glazing oolors and prodi-
Rality OF frilling. founcing and furbelow-
ing do not constitute real beauty or oven
prettiness Of apparel; it is the cut of the
donned. the happy opposition of color in
the basic fabric and in the added details
which lend fascination to the dress "a q
whole, Take the 'Vierlander Madohen"-
a decaying race, by the way-who sells bou-
quets under the porticoss of the theatres at
~ npnhr,r1 fTalA< TIA rrnn bnonNnIr~A -
with her kirtle of ounningly contracted
hues, and the snowy "fazzoletto" of white
linen which she wears az a headdress. Take
the Venetian "horaja" and the 'portatrice
d'acqua" or water-carrier, and contrast any
one of these types with the London flower
the astonishing picture" hat which that
hoarse-yoiced, and sometimes i%ntemper-
atsly-tongued, young female wears is rather
an expensive article than otherwise,
for which she pays by installnent.
and sometime even ballots for it,
In the manner adopted by
members of building societies. She
patron1zes, moreover, a particular jacket, a
particular length of skirt and kind of bo OF,
and she would scorn to alter the wondrous
fringe" of hair cut over her forehead.
But who, not being a vandal of the van
dals, a philistine of the philistines, would
venture to call the London fower-pirl's
=" Scobo LII tub
proper sense of the term it ia not a costume
at all; whereas III the dress of the peasant
woman of the Campagna, of the flower
seller and the water-carrier of Venice, IN
the trim little maiden from Eierland, with
her short plated skirt and her trim blue
hose, the coarsest of fabrics, the simplest of
designs, and the most primitive of colors
produce a combination which at once at
tracts and plesscs the eye. The pity of
1t 10 that all these continental costumes are
drifting into extinction. In Rome the
'fazzoletto" and the many-hued kirtle
are rarely worn save by professional
models for ~artlsts; and the Venetian fower-
girls who poster the tourists Mt Florian's or
the Specchl to buy their posiss, and often
thrust them uninyited into the trayelers'
b~uttonholes, are rapidly r%elinquiBhing their
distinctive gnrb and dressing themselves
after the fashions prescribed in the plates
OF the cheap fashion periodical. As for tho
gondoliers, they have abandoned the wear
ing OF a striking costume as completely M
they have discontinued their citations from
Iasso.
There are still Swiss cantons in which the
strongly marked m extremely picturesque
Hslvetis costume ID adhered to. and in Ger
tain parts OF Norway, such as the Hardan-
ger and Ielenarken districts, tho peasautry
still wear their characteristic native dresser;
but in both countries the "wide.awake hnt''
and the suit OF "dittoes" for men, and the
cheap and Unlocking parodies of the
Paris fashions for women are steadily
making their ignoble and depress-
ing way. "Store clothes" have
even invaded the TyroI and the provinces
of Austria; while in European Turkey the
upper classes have wholly divorced them
selves from the turban and the ~oaftan. and