The Northern Guardian. — 1895-08-10 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

LEGISLATION ABOUT DRESS.  [SPECIALLY CONTRIBUTED.]  Despite Mr Stead's strictures on Chicago, it appears that Porkopolis greatly dreads that the impropriety of cycling in stockings will bring blushes to the cheeks of its young persons. So it, has befallen that, in a free and enlightened Republic, at the fag end of the 19th century, it has been thought advisable to legislate upon the costumes to be worn by wheelmeu and women. A "baggy garment" is what the inexorable law demands. No longer may well-made men contrast their muscles with those of neighbours who possess what Mr Punch once called Chippendale extremities. Nor may the daring fair show her distracting ankles to delighted spectators. The " baggy garment " is to make all equally ugly and ungraceful. To our English ideas such a Draconic revival as a sumptuary law does strike the imagination as passing strange. "Tire law is the true embodiment of everything that's excellent," and once upon a time it had a great deal to do with dress. In Rome it very strictly regulated the garments to be worn, and no case is recorded of any daring Plebeian recklessly donning the purple stripe that marked the wearer a Patrician. Until a very recent period the Jew in every country was condemned to wear some badge to stamp him of the nation. We do not now call in justice to determine whether balloon sleeves shall be permitted to become a public nuisance, but when Richard the Second reigned it was deemed imperative to regulate the length of those marvellous pointed shoes with jewelled , chains of silver and gold the gallants attached to their knees. Bluff King Hal, though he loved to bedeck his own stout person, and though his courtiers padded their short breeches until they looked as corpulent as their sovereign, invested dress with a perfect tangle of legislative strictures to separate the classes and the masses, and somewhat later the abnormal width of the ruff was regulated in its proportions by a special ordinance. Women, however, clung tenaciously to the most becoming of all modes until a murderess, coquette to the last, insisted upon being executed in one. John Knox was very hard upon the ruff, but, no doubt, when the ladies saw its fascinating effect around the slender neck that bent under the axe of the headsman they found its charm irresistible.  The law forbade the wearing of hoops to women, both in England and France, below a certain prescribed rank. It was almost a pity it did not interfere with the liberty of the subject in 1860, and prevent the atrocities for which the barbarous crinoline was answerable, even as the State of Minnesota did two years ago. That the artists did their humble best to banish the accursed monstrosity from their pictures was not enough. John Leech has drawn us girls by dozens with pretty faces, but with all their grace destroyed by the cages in which they are encompassed. There does not at present seem to be any very pressing need for sumptuary laws. Our ugly clothes need not of necessity be very costly. Gone is that picturesque period Sir Walter Besant loves to describe. Gone is Mr Pepys, with that historical birthday suit of velvet, price £4O. Goldsmith lies in the Temple Church• yard, and flaunts no more in peach-blossom brocade. Only at an occasional fancy ball do we encounter the beau of George the Second's time. As we survey his white satin coat, flowered waistcoat, silk stockings, and gold-buckled shoes, we wonder vaguely if the hapless tailors ever got paid, and how, in such a climate as this of merry England, it was possible to walk the town in such delicate attire.  The vanishing of the sumptuary law shows conclusively that our extravagance has taken other forms. There was a period when, at the court of Louis the Magnificent, a gentleman wore the price of an estate at a ball. Then there was that famous gift to the fair Montespan of which Madame de Séwignd penned notes of admiration—" Gold brocade, upon gold trimmed with certain other gold and small brilliants." Doubtless the speculative courtier who made this offering to the haughty beauty exacted a bishopric or a regiment in return. But, perhaps, now that Chicago has found out the impropriety of stockings we may follow suit. Tennis, golf, and athletics generally, will wear a weirdly-changed aspect if the new Government is going to take up the "baggy garment." This is at present the only description given, and it is not inviting. We earnestly beseech the cycling lady to take the road in becoming clothes only, lest she should catch the eye of some lawyer with a thirst for notoriety.