The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-12-25

The study of the evolution Of dress,
above ali Greek dress, might paralyze
the genius of a Darwin. Just when
man thinks that he is, at last, On the
level of scientific opinion he finds that
he has drifted leagues astern OF 1t or
far away to the left or right. The
subject is so difficult because, natural
". we have no ancient costumes before
ms in linen or wool, while the early ar
lists who depict them are not always
trustworthy persons. They nave
strong tendency, from the dateless pc
Rod of the artists contemporary with
the mammoth and the reindeer IN
France to the bushmen In South At
RIGA. to draw men with wasps waists
and to represent people as naked who
were certainly clothed, says the Balti-
more American. Nobody was likely to
90 naked in a climate that suited the
mammoth and reindeer, especially if he
was well supplied with bone needles
to sew his raiment, as he certainly
was. Yet palaeolithic man usually
drew his species without stitch or
clout But yesterday were his paint
ings OH rock walls discovered, in which
his women wear skirts with half
moon cnt out at the lower end to give
play to the ankles.
It is difficult to say whether, in
warm climates, dress was invented for
the sake Of deeorum or of decoration.
If we take the case of Egypt, the old
Egythian paintings show that. for men
the ordinary loin cloth was usually suf
ficient If We pass from Egypt to
Crete, the art of the mysterious white
men who founded and achieved (about
2500-1200 B. CD its civilization shows
in early periods men in loin cloths, per-
haps first worn by them in Northern
Africa. The women, in the opinion of
Doctor Mackenzie. were originally no
better clad. But on one side the ladies
developed the loin cloth into "belt
ed pannier or polenaise, :" without any
skirt or bodice Gas also did the men),
ard then the women went on Iengthen-
ing the pannier by overlapping addi-
tons till they had a compound
skirt like a fiounced skirt in out
ward appearance, and finally fashion
reveled in skirts with, regular founces
and low bodices above.
Costumes of Old Crete.
Having perhaps two thousand years
to devote to costumes and fashion,
these ladies of Crete evolved almost
every sort of dress known to us in
Western Europe from the Elizabethan
ruff and puffed sleeve to the dress of
England at the end of the eighteenth
century, TO early Victorian, to gaudily-
colored and trimmed "'zouave Jack
ets,'' with light founeed skirts, and
even to the tam-o 'shanter cap, tailor
made coat fitting tightly to the figure
and tweed skirt. There is a bronze
statuette of Cretan lady thus attired
photographed in Doctor Mosso's ac-
count of his Cretan tour.
Ladies even forsook sandals and
wore hootines; in fact, some of them,
in the ancient Cretan pictures, are
known as ''les Parisiennes, very gay
little persons of about 1900 B. C.
The men, on the other hand, clung to
their loln cloths, or to baggy short
skirts like loose knickerbockers or
wore tight, brief bathing drawers EN-
broidered or embossed, and only wore
long robes on Sundays, or, at least
when present at religious functions. The
one fashion that the ancient Cretan
women never adopted was the familiar
Greek peplos, so graceful in its drap
cry, which has no "body'' or bodice
no separate skirt, "but is, in fact, nc
more than square woollen blanket
folded" in way which / do not un
derstand, "and taken up round the
waist by girdle.'' 1t was pinned W