The San Francisco call., 1896-04-19
The Pretty Girl With Bifurcated
Drapery Is Already
Doomed.
DECLINE OF ANOTHER FAD
Swelldom Smiled Upon but Did Not
Copy Her, and Soon the
Novelty Ceased.

The bloomer girl OF San Francisco is 60
ing from US.
Like all things that come to gladden. and
distress the heart of man and sometimes
incidentally to occasion family disputes,
woman, fair woman, of all ages and OF all
previous conditions of flowing skirts, has,
in her fckleness, begun to leave her
bloomers to the seclusion of some dark
and moth-threatened closet at home. For
the fad for the natty, jaunty things that
looked like baggy trousers and permit
ted just suggestion, or sometimes more
than a suggestion, of well-rounded calf to
be visible, is certainly on the decline in
San Francisco. When such another op-
portunity for display of coanettishness
may occur is as uncertain as the equilib-
rum of a beginner awheel. But it will
manifest itself somewhere; for ever de-
signing, charming woman will not remain
content with what has been.
The hustle came and went. 1t rose and
then fell with the certainty of all things
that are developed beyond an artistic
semblance to reality. But the bloomer
was not a monstrosity. 1t varied as did
the individuals that affected it. but wher.
ever it was unattractive the fault lay not
so much in the material or in the fit as in
the limbs and feet that kindly skirt
might better have covered. In it the
matron who liked to imagine that she was
still girlish and sprightiy did not always
look exactly angelic perhaps because of a
pair of beer-keg calves that main tanned
the same uniform rotundity until they
.:-ned into feet.
She wonders why her dyspeptic, slen-
der-shanked husband objected to her
wearing bloomers! And the would be-
considered athletic woman, whose peaked
features and swift, mannish stride were
always an indication that if by accident
she should gain an ounce of much needed
flesh she would hastily run it off-she did
not loom up much in bloomers, either;
but she would wear them. And how often
did man think that whatever might be the
extra cost for the lavish fullness of the
modish skirts and voluminous sleeves and
the high stocks, it was devoted to a good
cause if it only made him forget that the
owl is very small bird when robbed of
its feathers.
But all this is only incidental to the fact
that the bloomer craze is on the wane. The
local dressmakers, women's tailors, and
dealers in ready-made bloomers, almost
to an individual, admit that where the
demand was at its height a year ago, it is
become SO light that the b1oomer trade
can hardly be considered one of their
sources of revenue.
Yet the experience of these persons
should not be taken as a conclusive proof.
The great majority Of bloomers have been
made at home. Sometimes by dress
makers; more often by novices, who per-
haps had never profted even by the expo
rience of making little Johnnie pair of
"pants'' from papa's discarded leans"
+ The bloomer may cost anything from
simply the labor employed in the home
product remodeled from an erstwhile
skirt, to the most approved creation of the
skilled artisan ranging up in the twenties,
thirties and forties, leaving the ready
made article and the private dressmaker's
production to fill in all the degrees between
ish indifference to price.
One pretty little dressmaker thinks that
unskilled workmanship has had much to
do with the decline and fall of the bloomer.
"Oh, yes, most of them are made at
home," she said, ''and don't they look it :?
When thing ceases to be natty it goes out
of style. Many of the bloomers had be-
gun to look about as genteel as workmen's
overaIls."
The novelty of bloomer mattresses was
tried and it resulted in only more
hasty return to skirts. Even the dives
added to their doubtful allurements of bad
music and faded and haggish femininity
by introducing the bloomer. It soon ran
it's course.
In the earlier rains of this winter the
bloomer girl veptured forth, but in the
recent showers she has been only a pleas
ant memory to be unused on by the staring
clgar-stand statuary on Market and
Kearny streets.
Where the bloomer girl used to be seen
shyly fitting out in the uncertain light of
evening for spin up and down the block
on her wheel or her brothers. wheel. she
has ceased to wander.
That girl is still in existence. Wait
until she comes out in all her glory as the
irresistible summer girl, and you will
think So The bIoomers, too are yet in
tact. The wheel is uniniured. The dis
position OF the girl alone has changed.
Always eager for that that is latest and
calculated to make her most attractive.
the San Francisco girl is becoming tired
OF her bloomers. They were real fun for
while, but when the novelty was gone
the greatest charm was gone with it.
The co-eds of the University of Cali
fornia and Stanford may cling to their
boomers for succeeding basket-b ball
matches, happy in the consciousness that
they will be fiatteringly illustrated in the
newspapers by horrid man, who must not
see but who may imagine their struggles.
Their experience will have about it the
charm that has always been attached 70
things forbidden from the time of the first
apple to latter-day notices on high fences
warning boys not to fich the fruit within.
whether or not the shocked Berkeley
women's cry of horror at the suggestion OF
their public appearance in basketball
attire aided in discouraging the bloomer
girl IS not definitely known. That it
formed one of the stems down fro,, 49,