The San Francisco call., 1898-05-08
RRORS! DRESSAHERS SAY CR0NE GO TO BE E FASHION AGAIN
The Man Dressmaker Is Responsible for the Jrouble.

ORROR or horrorsi The cr1n-
 oune is coming back! Rail, pro
 test, insist upon our rights as
 individuals and free ,eon1er1nss aggnss ao to
 down the tyrant Fashion, who
 has sent forth the decree that the crinoline must be adopted again
 The rurnor has been consistently circu- lated for two or three years at every change of season that the crlnollne was to be revived. but so far no one has been brave enough to enforce the edict. But We have been gradually growing up to it-so gradually that the skirts decorated with rows upon rows of flounces, giving that full, hooplike appearance which is the forerunner of the obnoxious crtno- line have become matter of little inter est to us, and we have accepted them as a matter of course.
 There is only one consolation in the thought of this revival, and that is the fact that all these old fashions restored are so modified and modernized that when they do finally come to us they appear so natural and so different from what we expected that we wonder we ever fought against them or even imagined they were going to be so terrible.
 To the most casual of observers 1t is plain that women have a tendency just now to revert to the dreadful crinoline of past period. The first sign of this re- version came with the revival of the rows of founces. Then came a billowy dis tension of the skirt. At first this was confined to the back. But now the woman of fashion floats-that is the only word upon a perfect cloud that suggests the days of long ago. When the balloon has gone all around the final development will have been reached
 Of course, there is something to be said III IaVor Of the cr1noltne. AddiSon-or was 1t Steele-once pointed out the fact that It was protection, in that 1t kept man at a distance. But that is an ethical point, and the science of beauty knows no ethical reasons.
 Fancy an up-to-date woman on a wheel wearing crtnoline! Can any picture be more absurd, ridiculous and grotesque than a bicyclist wearing hoopskirt? Yet The man dressmaker fears the influence of the bachelor maid and the new mean so much profit to him, this fad for severity in the matter of gowns, which has been rearing its head among us late cated trimmings can be put plain, clinging skirt? What outlet has all his talent for designing exquisite creations when the average woman insists upon donning plain cloth skirts and tailor-made bOdiceS?
 Therefore, in sheer desperation, the man dressmaker has started in on new cru sade. He is determined to make woman look more womanly, and he has brought mothers and grandmotherS. But the women who wore these birdcages had more space, more room to move around in The world was not in continual rush to crowd into twenty-four hours the work of forty-eight. We had no cable cars those days, no trolley tyrants, no the bell rope ready to ring the moment the woman's foot was on the lowest step. This matter of hurry, hurry is all very well while the modern woman wears the present style of dress; but imagine a woman in a crinoline hurrying to catch a trolley car, Scrambling to get on board before the bell rings and at the same time trying to manipulate the unWieldy hoop skirt in which she is caged!
 Funny papers twenty-five or thirty years ago used to be filled with carica- lures of women trying to sit down while wearing hoopskirt- Yet to-day woman says she is emancipatedi For all that she is a willing slave to fashion, and When the edict goes forth from Paris that she must don a crinoline don 1t she does, just as meekly and obediently as she did in the days of old, when she owned to pos sessing lord and master"
 AS the American women are said to lead the world in intelligence and pro gressiveness, it is to be hoped, now that a chance is given them to assert themselves and prove their superiority, they will rise in a body and refuse to adopt fashion which is bound to make them look ridic- ulouS.
 Although every one has his feet measured for shoes. there are very few persons who know what the sizes marked upon the shoe stick mean. There are two shoe sticks in use in America and Europe. The stick used in the United States was originally English and is still used in England. The rest of Europe uses the French stick.
 The sizes on the English shoe stick were derived from the length of a bar ley corn, and they run three to the inch. The first mark on the stick, or size 1, is made arbitrarily, just AZ inches from the upright Why this distance