Evening star., 1919-06-22

alton. Why top-heavy civili-
zation should fall into some Of the
crude practices of uncivilixed races is
beyond the scope of reporter Of ap-
parel. The students of the human
race may explain it.
That which is excessively crude is
often followed by that which is en-
cessively cultivated. There seems to
two which Is covered up most of the
time and merely appears at intervals.
Nudity in the savage is not i'm
modest. Semi-nudity in a civilized
woman is considered so. Naturally.
The spirit is the thing.
4 \
Throughout the centuries the pull
piteers have preached against this au-
dacity of women who now and then
return to bits of savagery without the
redeeming spirit of the savage.
Neither the pulpit nor the press, the
doctor nor the reformer. has had any
influence with women. When they
choose to invent and exploit style
they go right on their path until they
are wearied of it. The discussions that
lightning around lightning rod: the
current goes right down into the
ground and becomes harmless.
Why women take it into their heads
every few decades to adopt half CO.'S
tunes instead Of whole ones is again
beyond the wisdom of the sages.
1t is said that the dressmakers are
responsible. Not so. No dressmaker
could make a group of women wear
anything they disliked.
The dressmaker who rides to sue
cess on the wave of psychology, who
is ready to give woman what she
wants the exact moment she wants it,
is clever, but she is sti11 the instru-
ment of another's desire.
No dressmaker can make fashion;
she Is dependent on her patrons
After the fashion is made. after 1t Is
launched and accepted, then other
women follow like sheep; but they are
not following the dressmaker; they
are running along the path after the
ben wether.
The exponents Of extreme styles,
such as semi-nudity. are not always IN
what is called the upper classes,
phrase which we had better use as
quickly as we can until it, like aupc-
racy, goes down into the dust heap.
OF course, there will always be an
upper class. No social democracy can
ever escape it, The superior man Will
always be above his interiors.
A new meaning may be given to the
phrase upper class" IL social democ-
racy has its way on this planet. but at
the present moment every one knows
just what is meant by the words as
they are used in this epoch OF the
worlds history.
And on this upper class" are put
most of the burdens Of iniquity. They
are asked to be the bearers of all that
is wrong; and yet those who know
clothes and sell clothes realize that
there goes, hand-in-hand with this
class, a vaster assemblage OF other
women who are not ticketed. They
merely wear new things whenever new
things appear. even IL they 60 without
bread and butter or sleep in two-oy-
four tenement room.
One sees them as the gayest or
BUTTERFLIES, shoulder to shoulder with
the fashionable women, at restaurants,
public dances. theaters, and all the
other spots where extreme clothes are
exhibited.
No one knows whence they come
or where they go. They seem 10
be birds of paradise who wake up
after 6 o'clock in the evening.
1t is this class, along with the fash-
ionable classes, who have Launched
this era Of semi-nudity in the evening.
And II is because Of this fashion OF
the hour that the students of clothes
and of the race turn to the psychology
behind the act and dip into other GEN.
turtles when the same thing has oc-
Cured and reoccurred, until 1t has be-
come symptomatic Of certain condi-
tions.
Here is one interesting point about
it., 1t has invariably broken loose at
the end Of the war.
Throughout the centuries 1t mas
sprung into fame the moment the
cannon stopped firing.
Its history goes farther back than
cannon. 1t may be traced to the days
of bows and arrows. of battering rams,
of those battles led by Hamiicar' wheh
poisonous snakes were thrown over the
walls of a besieged city as more deadly
than stones.
The higher the form OF living and
the expression of culture In the an
It,. ,roa,as ~ civilixatfon, the more