Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-10-28
REFORM IN DRESS
Pauline Pry Turns to the Nuns to
Solve the Problem.
DAME FASHION is OSTRACISED
Unsuccessful Sacrifices at Affairs of
Modern Reformers
THE NEW WOMAN'S BURDEN

Written for The Evening Star.
L have been talking dress with the only
women on earth who have solved the dress
problem-women in religion, nuns.
There isn't dress reform of my day and
generation that have not tried on the dog
myself l have made sacrifices at the
shrines of DR.. Mary Walker, Jenness Mil
Ter, the lady athlete and the transcendental
lady, only to find that each and every one
of these reformers has missed the main
issue of the clothes problem-how to be rid
of them. They have failed utterly to grasp
the moral idea of dress, and with an eye
single to art, hygiene, muscular or mental
development, what have they not done to
my immortal soul?
A tender young thing, under the inf1u-
ence of one of these crusades, 1 have cast
corsets and petticoats to the winds and
done up underside in homeless, bifurcated
soft silk inventions, topped with a gown
built on a Grecian model. l have felt the
stays of my moral being yield to the spirit
OF Sappho lncarnate in this dress reform,
until, by desperate effort of conscience
l didn't escape back into conventional at
tire any too soon can tell you.
B1Oomers and Skirt.
Then the lady professor, with her charts
and her gymnasium, entrapped my under
standing and led my feet astray. With
chalk marks on blackboard she demon
strated that because of the clothes my
mother and grandmother had worn and be-
queathed to me my anatomy and internal
organs were all gone wrong. She pre-
scribed Indian clubs, basket ball, bicycles
boomers.
I'll tell you this about boomers and the
short skirt that outside the ring-I mean
outside the gymnasium-goes with them.
No woman ever Travelled the straight and
narrow path in boomers and short skirt
above her boot tops. l know; 1 have tried
them.
In the name of hygiene in a spirit of
pure devotion to the physical uplifting of
my downtrodden unhappy SEX 1 have set
forth upon the street in bicycle attire, and
II l did not give way to an uncomfortable
impulse to kick up my heels 1t was because
fear of the police and a realizing sense of
the danger that encompassed me caused
me to turn back, go home and change my
clothes before it was everlaStingly too late.
The riotous, risky, frisky spirit Of opera
bouffe is the inspiration of abridged petit
coats and abbreviated skirts for women:
nor can any logic Of hygiene and equal
rights make a dress reform built on this
plan anything but a private sorrow and
public wrong. Much as I have suffered
experiencing how susceptible my sternly
disciplined nature is to the wickedness of
clothes that are few and short worn by my
self similar clothes worn by other women
give me no less pain.
I don't know Of anything better calcu-
lated to ingram pessimism and the bitter
ness of great disappointment than to see
a merry figure tripping along the street,
her twinkling ankles and bewildering curves
fond a joy to the eye as her jaunty car
riage and brisk motion; then have this
same marvel of natty naughtiness suddenly
turn on you forty year-old. tired face, as
a big boy that has whisked into sight calls
Mamma or, perchance, "Grandma."
While things like this continue to make
q orb np q I
what use it is to draw any lines at anything
on the stage or bill boards.
In Manly Attire.
I have never gone the whole length Of
the reform of which DIR. Mary Walker is
master and example. Still. as my innocent
little children have fallen and badly hurt
themselves trying to get around the ugli-
ness Of my great, bulldog boots; as my
sleepy baby has sought In vain for COM
Portable spot to rest on my stiff, starched,
man-made shirt waist; as l have been I'M
able to stoop to his cuddling, baked by the
height and the starch of my collar, it has
appeared to me that If my common sense"
dress did include a silk hat and trousers, it
wouldn't take me much further from the
appointed sphere of woman than conven-
tional clothes at the end Of the nineteenth
century have carried me-
A Lady Reformer.
Lady reformers who get their higher aims
mixed up with their wardrobes are the
most hopeless lot of all. Their pretensions
raise such great expectations that their
practices are correspondingly dscouraging.
There is one 1 know whose spiritual devel-
opment has caused her to grasp the eternal
truth that the real dress question is how
to be rid of clothes. but her application of
this to daily experience is going to get her
arrested some day.
1 met this woman one day shopping with
out bonnet, wearing waist of one kind
and skirt of another. I ventured to re-
mind her of her bonnet, and she told me
she frequently forgets it. her mind is SO alb
sorbed in higher things, and that IL the day
ever arrives when she can forget all about
all her clothes she will feel that her soul IS
truly ema ncpated.
1 suggested that while she might feel this
way about 1t, 1 didn't believe the world
generally would, unless she establishes her
self at Coney Island.
The SpirituaI-Minded Reformer.
This spiritual-minded dress reformer Is
an exception. AS a rule, women who con-
slider the dress problem on a spiritual basis
have to give so much thought and time
to their attire that their souls are eternally
lost in a shuttle Of shopping and dress
making. This is of the reforms I have
tried on myself, so | know perfectly well
what I'm talking about.
l conceived the idea once that mystical
something IN Color makes d com DlnaIlOn Oh
gray and white the only hues in which 1T
is proper or possible for a woman to work
out her eternal salvation. 1 might refrain
from certain sins and attain a limited meas
ure of spiritual excellence, wearing red and
green and yellow clothes, but to be very
very good. to be a downright lovely saint.
l must have a particular shade of gray
gown. with a white crepe de lisse fichu
While l was nobly struggling for the right
shade of gray 1 met a lady philosopher
from Boston, who was the perfect attain
ment of my ambition. Her gown was just
the gray, her fichu precisely the childlke
effect of pure thought and exalted virtue
which I had sought in vain. I heard her
lecture. and the words that fell from her
lips were exactly what you would logically
expect from that dress and that fichu. I
went to spend a week with her I wanted
to sit at the feet Of her wisdom, and Incl
dentally get sample of her dress and her
fichu.
Alas. found the truth was not in her It
was in books in her library from which she
freely cribbed for her platform perform
ances. and her whole life went in watching
colors. Gloves, bonnets, wells. wraps, pet
ticoats. all had to reproduce the spiritual
hue of her gown, and there never was a
moment that her dress off her mind,
and 1t was commonly very unpleasantly on
her nerves. She had to spend so much en-
ergy in looking like saint that she had
none left for being one
n 60 IAa 49,