The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1909-11-13

Their American women go to Paris be-
cause they get better value for their
money, or in obedience to a sort Of cult
that has lost its true meaning while
still maintaining its power. In other
words, can the American woman be
served just as well at home? The !
American dressmaker, naturally |
enough, says that she can, but the
American woman says that she can
not, and that she goes to Paris be-
cause only in Paris can she get what
she wants. What is mere man that
he should rush into the breach and
probably get a belaboring from both
sides in his efforts to be impartial?
Beauty in dress argues Mr.. Douglas,
is not matter of the handiword of an
individual, because it is quite possible
| to kidnap the individual and transfer
him or her bodily to New York. This,
of course, is done often enough but
the French dressmaker in New York
! is not the same as the French dress
maker in Paris. On the contrary, the
art of Paris is something that must
| be absorbed from the air, it is the at
tribute of a community and not of
unit:
The American Venus can not over
throw foreign prestige in feminine
fashion," for the simple reason that
Paris alone can evolve fashions which
crafty her desire to look different
every few months. The secret of fe-
minnie charm is its passion for end
less variety. Paris, and Paris alone.
can cope with the feminine desire for
change There Us some mysterious
magic in the air of Paris which is not
found in the air of London, or Berlin,
or Rome, or st. Petersburg or Brussels,
or Vienna or Madrid, or New York
Nobody can explain it but it is there.
You ca mot bottle it and carry it away
for the Partisan dressmaker and the
Partisan milliner quickly become de-
moralized when transplanted into Lon
don or New YORK. The Partisan en-
vironment affects their invention in
some mysterious way, and stimulates
their imagination. The London en-
r vironment quickly destroys the Pari-
t sian grace and elegance and lightness
= of touch. If all the great Partisan
? dressmakers and milliners were cap
5 tured by an English army and brought
? captive to London, in year their
dizziness and deXterity would be gone.
2 They would become Anglcized; they
5 would become heavy and clumsy and
| dull 1t is a mistake to ascribe the
t delicate grace of Partisan fashions to
: French character, for the French pro-
= vincial towns do not foster it. 1t is a
purely Partisan quality and it does not
exist in France outside Paris. In Paris
it is exuberant. The supply of ideas
is never exhausted, and the midnettesr
with their magical fingers and the
mannequins, with their instinct for
style, grow like mushrooms. They are
not made; they are born. The air OF
Paris breeds them and feeds them.
The real dressmaker cannot flourish
in New York because New York is
harder, harsher, and more metallic
It contains no fitting soil, for the arr
of the dressmaker will not grow in
fenced-off reservations or in selected
garden plots. 1t demands whole city
full of devotion. 1t is jealous and
will tolerate no other gods. The Pari-
sian dressmaker learns her art moi
so much in the shops that teach hel
how to use her needle as from the
stored-up aroma Of centuries. She
h knows that she is not ministering tt
individuals but to a nation,' to ira
Y dition, and that the gamin at the street
corner and the boulevardier are al
much of a tribute in admiration anC
applause The city is at her feet anC
there are no exemptions, no divided in
terests, no whirl of a steely CONNER
cialism, to divert the attention or t.
share the honors
1T is the fierce glare OF criticism
which makes Paris the dictator of thu
worlds fashions. If woman is no
elegant in Paris she is an eyesore
= London stares at an elegant woman
d Paris stares at a dowdy woman. II
y London woman is either pretty O.
plain; in Paris even the plain woman
) is pretty. The Parisienne as a rule
! is not beautiful, and perhaps that i