The Glass of Fashion, The Tyranny of Style

“ A delirium of fashion exists. Women are ranked by what they wear, not by what they are. Extravagance of dress, and almost indecency of dress, has taken the place of simple womanly beauty. Wordsworth once described the "perfect woman nobly planned." Where will you find the perfect woman now? Not in the parti-coloured, over-dressed creature—the thing of shreds and patches—with false hair, false colour, false eyebrows, false everything. "Some of nature's journeymen have made them, and not made them well, they imitate humanity so abominably." ”

“ Such undue proportion has the matter taken in the American Woman's life under democracy that one is sometimes inclined to wonder if it is not the real "woman question." Certainly in numbers of cases it is the rock upon which a family's happiness splits. The point is not at all that women should not occupy themselves seriously with dress, that they should not look on it as an art, as legitimate as any other. The difficulty comes in not mastering the art, in the entirely disproportionate amount of attention which is given to the subject, in the disregard of sound principles. ”

“ It is fashion, fashion, fashion wherever we turn. Fashion waits beside our cradle to lead us by the hand through life. Now literature is sentimental, now hopefully humorous, now psychological, now new-womanly. Yesterday’s pictures are the laughing-stock of the up-to-date artist of to-day, and to-day’s art will be sneered at to-morrow. Now it is fashionable to be democratic, to pretend that no virtue or wisdom can exist outside corduroy, and to abuse the middle classes. One season we go slumming, and the next we are all socialists. We think we are thinking ”

“ Fashion is the expositor of our habits and our social relations, from the standpoint of costume. It is a much more serious subject than it may seem at first; far from serving only as a source of frivolous talk, even when it is specially concerned with our dress and ornamentation, the subject of fashion, it has been wisely said, has its value as a moral sign-post, and supplies the historian, the philosopher, and the novelist with a guide to the prevailing ideas of the time. ”

“ Above all, it is an art in which woman chooses to express herself in a language free from the inhibitions placed upon other arts, in which, ignoring when she chooses, the primary excuses and incentives, she takes an art-for-art’s-sake justification for showing us the separate and independent fascination, in themselves, of sublimated clothes. No one who cannot perceive the inherent interest, if not the inherent justification, of clothes as clothes, ever can see deeply into the philosophy of dress, or ever can see deeply into the philosophy of women. ”

“ The whole costume is a failure so far as beauty and picturesqueness are concerned, but it claims to be practical, and if there were only a little more room in it for all the purposes of life I should say it succeeded well.
It also succeeds in something else. It paints truly the character of the women of the age. Matter-of-fact, sharp, full of common sense, with an eye to the main chance they are, and their tailor-made gowns express this most clearly. Not much room seemingly is there for romantic or motherly love, for devotion and self-sacrifice, in those tightly-fitting cases. ”

“ True nobleness of dress is a necessity to any nation which wishes to possess living art, concerned with portraiture of human nature. No good historical painting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the dresses of the people of the time are not beautiful ”

“ The one virtue of the women's dress of to-day is its variety and individuality. Those who are really dressed and not merely clothed, have their dresses "created" for them, and they belong to each other. The fair and the dark, the lean and the reverse, do not now bedeck themselves with the same all pervading tint or cut, whether it suits them well or ill, just because it is "all the go." Even the almost universal cut of to-day is usually graceful and of quiet tone. And somehow most girls seem to be of taller growth, and of better health and colour, and to walk better than ever before. ”

“ It is that in all the illustrations, from the simplicity of Athens, through the artificiality of Louis XIV and the monstrosities of Elizabeth, down to the undescribed modistic inventions of the first McKinley, there is discoverable a radical and primitive law of beauty. We acknowledge it among the Greeks, we encounter it in one age and another. I mean a style of dress that is artistic as well as picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, that accords with the grace of the perfect human figure, and that gives as perfect satisfaction to the cultivated taste as a drawing by Raphael. ”

“ Whoever understands the costume of an age understands of necessity its architecture and its surroundings also, and it is easy to see from the chairs of a century whether it was a century of crinolines or not. In fact, in art there is no specialism, and a really artistic production should bear the impress of one master, and one master only, who not merely should design and arrange everything, but should have complete control over the way in which each dress is to be worn. ”

“ A woman’s dress should be so much the expression of herself that, seeing it, we think not of the gown, but of the woman who is its soul. The true art of dress is reached when it serves only to heighten the charms of the wearer, not to draw attention from her to center upon her garments. ”

“ The dissenter hurts himself; he never affects the fashion. No woman, whatever her age or position or her opinion about the crinoline fashion, could avoid wearing one. No effort to introduce a fashion of "rational dress" for women has ever yet succeeded. An artist, novelist, poet, or playwright of a school which is out of fashion fails and is lost. An opponent of the notions which are current can get no hearing. The fashion, therefore, operates a selection in which success and merit are often divorced from each other, but the selection is pitiless. The canons of criticism are set by fashion. ”

“ The people who are "in the fashion" are the sheep. "Bell-wether takes the leap and they all jump over." In other words, there can be no really beautiful dress unless the spirit of individualism is fostered. Dress should "express" the wearer and provide an index as to character. Indeed, it does, as the spectacle of a woman or a man following blindly the dictates of fashion is sufficient evidence that he or she possesses no character at all. ”

“ There is no national sense of restraint and proportion. It is pretty generally agreed that getting all you can is entirely justifiable. There is no national sense of quality; even the rich to-day in this country wear imitation laces. The effect of all this is a bewildering restlessness in costume—a sheeplike willingness to follow to the extreme the grotesque and the fantastic. The very general adoption of the ugly and meaningless fashions of the last few years—peach-basket hats, hobble skirts, slippers for the street—is a case in point. ”

“ Fashion did more than revolutions. Fashion cut into the living flesh, attacked the very skeleton and framework of art; it chopped and hewed, dismembered, slew the edifice, in its form as well as in its symbolism, in its logic no less than in its beauty. ”

“ It is a simple, outright impossibility for human beings to have any true perception of art while a shadow of a thought of fashion remains. It is, indeed, possible that fashion may, for a moment, follow the straight and narrow road that leads to artistic excellence, as the fitful breath of a cyclone may, at a certain point in its giddy whirl, run parallel with the ceaseless sweep of the mighty trade-winds, but whoever tries to keep constantly in its track is sure to be hopelessly astray. ”

“ Architecture and decorative design are taught in the schools, but dress, which has existed since the world began, has no guiding laws, and sways from the severely ugly and matter-of-fact to the wildest extravagance of form and colour in a manner truly grotesque, were it not so sad to those who love ideal beauty, and whose eyes are daily outraged by flagrant sins against the laws of beauty and common sense. ”

“ Few men therefore are willing to allow, that custom or fashion have much influence upon their judgments concerning what is beautiful, or otherwise, in the productions of any of those arts; but imagine, that all the rules, which they think ought to be observed in each of them, are founded upon reason and nature, not upon habit or prejudice. A very little attention, however, may convince them of the contrary, and satisfy them, that the influence of custom and fashion over dress and furniture, is not more absolute than over architecture, poetry, and music. ”

“ American Costumes
Fashion is the work of the devil. When he made up his mind to enslave mankind he found in fashion his most effective weapon. Fashion enthralls man, it deprives him of his freedom; it is the most autocratic dictator, its mandate being obeyed by all classes, high and low, without exception. ”

“ But when the fashion is over, we cease to be used to it, and what pleased us a few years back now appears suddenly ridiculous. For this reason only those forms of garments are appropriate for statues which carry the specific character of a period in a more permanent type; but, in general, it may be advisable to find a middle way, as our artists attempt to do. Yet, despite of the rule, it is generally a mistake to clothe portrait statues in modern clothing when they are either small, or the object sought after is simply a familiar presentation. ”

“ The process of finding their own art and polity, begun under foreign guidance, was bound on the whole to diverge more and more from its Latin model. It consisted now of imitation, now of revulsion and fanciful originality; never was a race so much under the sway of fashions. Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit. It marks very clearly that margin of irresponsible variation in manners and thoughts which among a people artificially civilised may so easily be larger than the solid core. ”

“ The woman who is ruled by fashion may not consider herself a well-dressed woman. If her sense of beauty is developed, if she knows the value of art and harmony, she will not be the slave of a stupid mode. She will not worship at the pedestal of fashion, trembling as each new decree is announced lest she be not among the very first to observe it. Style does not dominate her personality; rather, her personality dominates style.
And after all, is it not absurd to adhere slavishly to that which is in vogue, without attempting to adapt those modes to one's own individuality? ”

“ But the great artists seldom adhere to the passing fashions; they arrange the dress or reconstruct it so that it shall be most becoming to their sitters and at the same time make a good composition of colour and form for their pictures. This is also done by ladies of taste, who will often turn some freak of fashion into a thing of beauty, and, regardless of their milliner and dressmaker, will adopt some modification of the passing style if it seems to them more suitable and becoming. ”

“ When is a woman well-dressed? It cannot be when she is merely fashionable, for when we glance at the fading portrait of some forgotten ancestor, graceful in her Colonial gown with its billows and billows of creamy white lace, we feel instinctively that she is well-dressed. And yet, we cannot call her fashionable. It cannot be elaborate attire, for we know that the stylish young miss in her severely tailored suit and sailor hat is certainly well-dressed. It cannot be distinctiveness—or individuality—for many a delightfully well-dressed young woman buys all her frocks and suits in the shops. ”

“ It seems to us that when a lady has once discovered the dress best suited to her age, appearance, and condition—the ideal robe in which she would wish to be painted for the eyes of unborn generations—her future study will be, not how much she can “follow the fashion,” but how little she need follow it to escape singularity. Fashion has nothing to do with a desire to be pleasant in the sight of others. ”

“ The artists were the enemies of fashion, as indeed all sensible people were, but resistance was in vain. Do you know, if I were to return to the nineteenth century, there is perhaps nothing else I could tell my contemporaries of the changes you have made that would so deeply impress them as the information that you had broken the scepter of fashion, that there were no longer any arbitrary standards in dress recognized, and that no style had any other vogue that might be given it by individual recognition of its merits. ”

“ It is in such study that the artist dressmaker proves his title clear to the name "artist," and to achieve artistic triumphs in dress it is not enough that one wears a beautiful gown, one must wear a beautiful gown perfectly adapted to one's individuality, a gown in which one is at one's best. There are some women who know instinctively their own requirements, but these women are few, and even they can carry out their ideas only through the sympathetic understanding of a dressmaker who is master of his art. ”

“ I am my own fashion-leader, and wear only what is becoming to my individual style of beauty. What a preposterous notion to proclaim that any particular colour or cut is to be exclusively fashionable this year for all women, for blondes and brunettes, for the tall and the short, the stout and the slim alike! What could have induced those women thus to annihilate their own beauty deliberately? ”

“ She had the rare gift of knowing how to embellish nature, how to bring forth all the capacities of a face and form, and how to modify the fashion of the day to the requirements of the wearer, instead of slavishly following an arbitrary mode, and thereby sacrificing all individuality of beauty. Dress became high art in her hands. ”

“ Its vogue will be precisely proportioned to the merit the popular taste recognizes in it, just as if it were an invention in mechanics. If a new idea in dress has any merit in it, it is taken up with great promptness, for our people are extremely interested in enhancing personal beauty by costume, and the absence of any arbitrary standards of style such as fashion set for you leaves us on the alert for attractions and novelties in shape and color. It is in variety of effect that our mode of dressing seems indeed to differ most from yours. ”