Clothes

“ She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour, and the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional, thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. ”

“ Surely clothes are designed, apart from their warmth, to make the best show of the body which is in them. Having discovered that style in which the average man or woman looks his very best, it seemed so needlessly ridiculous to keep changing it. ”

“ Remember that your clothes ought to make you look your very best. Clothes can do kindly things—bring out the pretty lights in your hair, make you look an inch taller or hide the awkward curve of your hips—or they can be very, very unkind. It is not always the out-of-date dress either that is the hard task master. ”

“ New Clothes at Easter and Whitsuntide—Wearing of Clothes—The Clothes of the Dead—The Apron, Stockings, Garters, &c.—The Shoe—The Glove—The Ring—Pins.
One would scarcely expect to find a host of odd fancies attached to such matter-of-fact necessities as articles of dress, but yet they hold a prominent place in our domestic folk-lore. ”

“ Dress has ever exercised a powerful influence on morals and on progress; but this vesture-phenomenon is a thing but imperfectly understood. Clothes serve as a covering to the body of which we are ashamed, and protect it against the weather, and these, we infer, are the reasons of our being clothed. ”

“ Until lately these mountain people made nearly all the clothes they wore. They had hand-looms which they built themselves, and it was the occupation of the women at all spare moments to spin the flax or the wool, to dye the yarn and weave the cloth. ”

“ And think how much more interesting the world would be were each of us to dress in that style which showed our good points to advantage. For, after all, what is the object of clothes, apart from modesty and warmth—which a blanket and a few safety pins could satisfy—if it be not to create an effect pleasant to the eye. ”

“ Besides their adorning functions, clothes have two purposes—to keep the body warm and to cover it. Primitive men and women in cold weather wore their skin garments; but in warm weather, discarding these, they probably considered themselves sufficiently attired in a little paint and a few feathers. ”

“ In the matter of clothes we cared for nothing except to be warmly and cleanly dressed. Strip the problem of clothes down to this and it's not a very serious one. To [284] realize that you've only to remember how the average farmer dresses or how the homesteader dresses. It's only when you introduce style and the conventions that the matter becomes complicated. Perhaps it was easier for me to dress as I pleased than for the boy or Ruth but even they got right down to bed rock. The boy wore grey flannel shirts and so at a stroke did away with collars and cuffs. ”

“ Here then it becomes apparent that special care is required in the selection of clothes, which can exercise a strong influence, either for good or evil, on the performance of the skin functions, and here we find that wool, which is the natural clothing of man as of the lower animals—a statement to which I shall recur hereafter—provides for our necessities. ”

“ You can adapt the style to your purpose or to suit your individuality. In fact, the placing of a waistline one inch lower, the shortening of a collar, or the lengthening of a tunic may be the difference between a becoming and an unbecoming frock. If you make your own clothes, you will have stylish clothes, prettier clothes—clothes that suit your individuality. ”

“ The practised eye of the old clothes man at once embraces every capability of the apparel, and the amount which these capabilities will realize; whether they be woollen, linen, cotton, leathern, or silken goods ”

“ Dress-making.—Substantial dress, of standard material and kind, strong shoes, and stout bedding, to be manufactured for the poor, so as to render it unnecessary for them, unless by extremity of improvidence, to wear cast clothes, or be without sufficiency of clothing. ”

“ For the first three days the very best clothes in the wardrobe are worn by everybody, then till the seventh the second best, and from the seventh to the end of the month new clothes, though not the very best, must be worn. ”

“ This long reign of over fifty years is a transitional period in the history of clothes, as in its course the draped man developed very slowly towards the coated man, and the loose-hung clothes very gradually began to shape themselves to the body. ”

“ It is thus quite clear that all of us are more or less under the thrall of dress. Those, therefore, who find the position irksome, will gain solace from the interesting investigations which can be made into the origin and development of costume. Others, again, whose clothes already find favour in their eyes, will enjoy looking at them from a different point of view. ”

“ Clothing.—​The havoc of clothes need not be great if the children are dressed for their little excursions, as they should be, in plainly made garments of some loosely woven woollen material, serge or flannel. ”

“ Fashions have been advanced as evidence in support of the proverb that there is nothing new under the sun, and the way in which some of them come round again goes a very long way to prove it in the case of clothes. ”

“ Most people, unless they were very poor, had also finer garments of cloth, which the women span and wove. But cloth was much scarcer than skins, besides being more easily worn out; and so the clothes for everyday wear were always of dressed hides. ”

“ A snuff-colored dress and a gray one need entirely different accessories. Russet shoes, chamois gloves, and sand-colored hat go also with henna, raspberry, reds, etc.; but gray must have gray or white shoes, gloves, and hat, which also go with blues, greens and violets.
Don't Get Too Many Clothes
Choose the clothes which you must have, carefully, and if you must cut down, cut down on elaborate ones. There is scarcely anywhere that you can not, fittingly go in plain clothes. Very few, if any, people need fancy things; all people need plain ones. ”

“ The question of clothes is a simple one and easily solved. The father wears a pair of blue cotton trousers in the summer, while the mother wears the same style garment with the addition of an apron effect which covers the bust. ”

“ The greater part of their clothes are long and flowing, loosely cast about the body, consisting only of a large piece of cloth, in the cutting and sewing of which very little art or industry is employed. They have more dignity and gracefulness than ours, and are better adapted to the burning climates of Asia. ”

“ Take our laundress, for instance, an admirable young woman, who gets up clothes to perfection, and who on Sunday exchanges her cotton gown and apron for the smartest of Parisian costumes. The amount of underclothes these countrywomen possess is sometimes enormous, and they pride themselves upon the largest possible quantity, a great part of which is of course laid by. ”

“ The garb of various sisterhoods still catches our eye, and there are certain points which may help us occasionally in identifying a doctor, a lawyer, a schoolmaster, and an actor. According to a recent article by a detective in one of the daily papers,52 the characteristics and individuality of a man will show through his clothes, and the writer alluded to, suggests the putting of a clergyman into a soldier’s or a sailor’s uniform, or again, the dressing of a valet in his master’s clothes. ”

“ AT THE beginning of every season when you are planning your clothes, look over, your wardrobe and decide what you have that is worth remaking and will fill some definite place in your outfit. Do not make over any clothes simply because you have them. ”

“ The town and country maids, the merchants’ wives, and the poor generally, each and all according to purse and pride, dressed in humbler imitation of the cut of the clothes of the high-born, in quite simple dresses, with purse, girdle, and apron, with heads in hoods, or twisted wimples of coarse linen. ”

“ Notwithstanding the vast amount of old clothes that came to us, we were always particularly short of the most important articles of an outfit, such as underwear, respectable skirts and dresses, and shoes—except of extraordinary sizes, sent because unsalable. It frequently happened that, for days together, there was hardly a thing in stock fit for people of the better class. ”

“ Some races can make very passable clothes by hammering the fibres from the bark of trees into a kind of cloth, while when men took to husbandry and cultivated plants that produce fibres, they learned also to spin and weave materials from which to make their garments. ”

“ Clothes which would be appropriate in a large city for a reception might be very inappropriate in a small town. Our daily clothes should be adapted to our uses, whether in country or city. Would you wear your party dress for gardening or for tennis or skating? ”

“ The all-importance of Clothes, which a German Professor of unequalled learning and acumen, writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; ”

“ Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor. ”

“ We’ve got to do something of the same sort for our trousers. Or more immediately applicable would be those tailor’s advertisements about correct clothes. ‘Good clothes make you feel good.’ You know the sort of line. ”

“ What you want are young clothes, but they can be a trifle more sophisticated than the girl in her Teens wears. You can break away from utter simplicity and have loose panels and tunics and coat effects. ”

“ Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell a trifle short of the wearer's expectation. ”

“ No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. ”

“ You can't know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable poor-box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in class next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies' cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I don't believe I could obliterate the scar. ”

“ I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. ”

“ Poor body, time and the long years were the first tailors to teach you the merciful use of clothes! Though some scold to-day because you are too much seen, to my mind, you are not seen fully enough or often enough when you are beautiful. ”

“ for experience shows us, that such emotions are often seen under rude and slovenly clothes, and that a hair shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it. ”

“ Almost every labourer has his Sunday suit, very often really good clothes, sometimes glossy black, with the regulation "chimneypot." His unfortunate walk betrays him, dress how he will. ”

“ Our clothes are going to pieces fast. Send provisions and clothes as soon as possible. ”

“ Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes. ”

“ A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. ”

“ Lavish thousands of dollars on your baby-clothes, and after all the child is prettiest when every garment is laid aside. That becoming nakedness, at least, may adorn the chubby darling of the poorest home. ”

“ I noticed that she wore her evening-dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes—there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings. ”

“ She had never read Sartor Resartus, but she had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners. ”

“ One can't help thinking, Daddy, what a colourless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman—whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge—is fundamentally and always interested in clothes. ”