The sun., 1919-09-07
CONDUCTED BY
FRANK PARKER STocKBRIDGE.
THE NEWEST LIBRARY.

WI HAT may become the most interesting and
Wv lin our present stage Of civilization) tho
most important library in the world is about to be
established by the Associated Dress Industries of
America It is to be, according to the announce
ment by Mr. David s. Mosessohn, the director Of
the association nothing less than the most compre
hensive and up to date fashion library in existence.
1t needs no argument to prove that it will be the
most interesting library in the world. One need
only glance at the advertising pages Of the daily
papers or try to buy copy Of Vogue twenty -four
hours after the day of publication il any doubt
exists to what subject interests the largest num-
Der of human beings. And it requires but mo
ment 8 reflection to grasp its Importance in world
where everybody drives his own Ford and the only
possible way of distinguishing the bank president
from the bank Waterman on Sunday afternoons on
the Boston Post Road is by the latter's choice of
red suspenders as his idea Of correct motoring
attire.
Clothes and Equality.
? So long az there are ladies who wear boudoir
caps in public restaurants and men who persist in
attending formal dinners in clothes that dferen-
tate their wearers so sharply from the walters as
to imply that consciousness Of inequality that finds
expression in the vehement assertion of equality we
shall not have achieved real democracy. For the
first essential of equality is that people shall look
alike. That is about as far as most of us co. either
in forming our opinions of the rest of us or in our
actual desire for democracy.
1t could, indeed, be argued convincingly that,
given equality of manners with all that implies, all
other inequalities would vanish or become neg
igble. And to large degree attire and manners
reflect and interact upon each other. The secret Of
the worlds contempt for Germany is not anything
that occurred in the war; it had its roots long
before 1914 in the invariable bad manners of the
German people. But how could anything but bad
manners be expected of people that tolerated the
wearing of white spats with tweed sack coatF
So the library of fashion should have as its foun-
dalton book copy of Sartor ResartuS; the philoso-
ply of the Herr Doktor Professor Teufelsdrokh
will outlast all the Rants and Hegels, all the
Nietzsehes and Won Bernhardis German scholarship
produced. Then it must contain comprehen-
sive history Of the republic of Venice. We may
some time parallel the democracy of Venice under
the Council of Ten, but in the outward aspects of
equality we shall never achieve results more salts
flying than those accomplished by the sumptuary
laws that prescribed uniform black attire for all
the people-laws the force of which persists to this
day in the unbroken custom of painting all gon-
dOlas black. And / would put into the Library Of
Dress copy of The Prince and the Pdupsr that
every ragged Tom CAVITY might realize that all lex
cept himself) that distinguishes him from the
Prince of Wales is his clothes.
Fashions in Literature
There is in the Library of Dress for the
worlds greatest masterpieces of art and literature
Gainsborough, Vatican, Kate Greenaway-one
might make list pages long Of famous painters
who have left their permanent impress upon the
worlds fashions in clothes. All literature is filled
with and much of it based upon clothes; the gar
ments Of the heroine are no less part Of her true
picture than her eyes and her teeth. All Sinclair
Lewis needs IN Free Air to convince us that his
garage mechanic is truly worthy of the brokers'
daughter from Brooklyn is deft reference to the
quality and fit of the young man s wrinkled but
well cut blue serge suit that he extracts from under
the seat cushions of his hivver!
TO get, as the gentlemen concerned in establish
ing the new fashion library might say, down to
brass tacks, there is an old book in the NewberTy
Library in Chicago called The History of Dress
there may be other copies of it in other libraries
and there certainly should be in the collection