Fashion

“ While all the other illustrations of the human ingenuity in making the human race appear fantastic or ridiculous amuse us or offend our taste, —except the tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now,—these few exceptions, classic or modern, give us permanent delight, and are recognized as following the eternal law of beauty and utility. ”

“ Beauty and comfort—that surely is the raison d'être of apparel—apart from modesty, which, however, a few fig leaves can satisfy. Fashion opens the gate, as it were, and we pass through it, one by one, like foolish sheep—without a sheep's general utility. ”

“ We rail at “fashion,” which by an unfelt compulsion drives multitudes simultaneously to approve the same dresses, the same plays, the same pictures, the same architecture, the same music, and the same scenery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How much fashion owes to hair and hair to fashion! How inexhaustible are the harmonies of line of which it is capable! How fascinating, by association, are the combs, and patillas and wimples and ferronières which have caressed and curbed it! ”

“ Observe that we have been laying down some of the maxims deduced from the principles of art and taste, in their application to dress, and not promulgating the edicts of Fashion. If there is a lack of harmony on some points, between the two, it is not our fault. We have endeavored to give you some useful hints in reference to the beautiful and the fitting in costume, based on a higher law than the enactments of the fashion-makers. You must judge for yourself how far you can make the latter bend to the former. We have been talking of dress as an individual matter. ”

“ To the Muses’ nine!
THOUGH the lovely Nin
All should pass away
Why should Woman pine,
If but Fashion stay?
THO’ the Muses’ lore
Molder on the shelf,
Still may She adore
In Fashion’s glass—Herself. ”

“ You believe, perhaps, that it is only great ladies who worship fashion, but far from it! Look at my sempstresses for whose dress I spare no expense, so that the dogmas of fashion may be proclaimed most emphatically from my shop. ”

“ I should be hideous, but I should be It, for the essence of true fashion is extremism. I said fashion, not elegance; that is quite another story, but then, to be elegant you must be born as the greyhound, and if you strive to elegance you are more likely to resemble the mouse. Fashion is much easier. ”

“ The air of fashion, which many young people are so eager to attain, always strikes me like the studied attitudes of some modern prints, copied with tasteless servility after the antiques;—the soul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what may properly be termed character. ”

“ It is the fate of all articles of clothing or adornment, naturally tied or twisted, or folded and pinned by the devotees of fashion, to become, after some little time, made up, ready made, into the shapes which had before some of the owner’s mood and personality about them. ”

“ When once involved in the whirl of fashion, extrication is difficult and painful—the descent is wonderfully easy—sed revocare gradum! The maniac hugs not his fetters, more forcibly, than the devotee of fashion clings, with the assistance, occasionally, of his better half, to his position in society. ”

“ While the world lasts, fashion will continue to lead it by the nose. And, after all, what [79] can fashion do for its most obsequious followers? It can ring the changes upon the same things, and it can do no more. Whether our hats be white or black, our caps high or low,—whether we wear two watches or one—is of little consequence. ”

“ Fashion granted it with a difference, and while rigidly austere in cut, clothes were so generally magnificent in their material and so generous in their width, that ruin might wait swiftly upon the prodigal with a pretty fancy in frocks. ”

“ If persons are inclined to rail against Fashion and denounce it, let them remember that there is a fashion in everything. In thought, in politics, in physic, in art, in architecture, in science, in speech, in language, and even in religion we find fashion to have a guiding and governing power. ”

“ And so, why don’t you, who are striving to express yourself more beautifully, to dress with more satisfaction and peace of mind, try this simple little plan of thinking about what you are going to wear and getting it ready before you start to dress? Then, watching always what you see in your mirror, your fashion books, on the streets, and in the shops, you will find that which is appropriate, becoming, and wholly lovely for you. ”

“ The dress had that polished medium between fashion and its exaggeration, that always denotes a high association, and perhaps a cultivated mind--certainly a cultivated taste--offending neither usage on the one hand, nor self-respect and a chaste appreciation of beauty on the other. ”

“ I have been told by persons of experience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a law of gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode is always only a step onward in the same direction as the last mode; and a cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts the new fashion. ”

“ Always consider well whether the articles of dress which you wish to purchase are suited to your age—your condition—your means—to the climate—to the particular use to which you mean to put them; and then let the principles of good taste keep you from the extremes of fashion; and regulate the form so as to combine utility and beauty, while the known rules of harmony in colors save you from shocking the eye of the artist by incongruous mixtures. ”

“ Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment universal, and dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for him. ”

“ Fashion should be sacrificed to taste, or, at best, followed at a distance; it does not do to be entirely out, nor completely in, what is called "fashion," many things being embraced under that term which are frivolous, unmeaning, and sometimes meretricious. ”

“ Many of those who are engaged in these great and glorious reformations, watch with eager interest, the ever varying freaks of the goddess of fashion, and are not exceeded by the butterflies of the ball room in their love of curls, artificial flowers, embroidery and gay apparel. ”

“ A certain proportion of people, on the other hand, think of style in dress as a sort of self-advertisement, a matter of force and emphasis, a question of flamboyance and the dernier cri. And there are still others who, with a finer conservatism, understand style to be that rare art in dress which effects a perfect compromise between the prevailing fashion and the personality, and which unerringly chooses, in color and in form, the garment best designed to suit, most completely and at the same time most unobtrusively the individual need. ”

“ It certainly cannot be pretended that these women adopted that dress from a love of novelty, or a desire to lead a new fashion, or from any other reason than a sense of its convenience, founded on experience. ”

“ Attend to these hints, and if you properly digest them, I have no doubt so sensible a head as you posses must nod assent to my doctrine, that to study fashion and be in the fashion is the most delightful and harmless employment upon earth, and the most conformable to our nature. ”

“ Fashion in dress changes but slowly when the dress itself is nothing but a girdle; and the fashions of the mind change with as little facility when ideas and wants, and the means of expressing the one and gratifying the other, are all alike few and extremely simple. ”

“ I will not speak of young ladies. To them I have no doubt it will sound as if I was using language certainly rash, and perhaps almost profane. What is fashion? Fashion of dress is perpetual change, if it is to be justifiable or if it is to be useful, there ought to be perpetual progress. ”

“ The styles we wear to-day are the derision even of the current journals, and what will be thought of them fifty years hence, when the fashion magazines show me as I look,—the envy of my moment, the fright of my grandchildren? ”

“ Art and the Fashions.—In discussing the parallel between art in clothing and the more stable art of home decoration it must be admitted, of course, that style in dress introduces some embarrassing questions; for the styles, especially for women, suffer wonderful changes with every season. And yet people of artistic feeling and good taste, succeed in maintaining a fair degree of harmony between the changing demands of fashion and the established principles of art as applied in dress. ”

“ So true is this, that it has become a common saying, that "one may as well be out of the world as out of the Fashion!" Yet what is Fashion, what does it amount to? Is one [Pg 63] really more respected, more beloved, more received into the arms of the good, more caressed by the worthy, for being fashionable? ”

“ Modish garments must be worn whiles the prevailing fashion holds—to-day they are the mode, to-morrow, the devil! Fashion, sir, is coquettish as woman or weathercock, 'tis for ever a-veering, already there is a new button-hole. ”

“ A general statement of the law that governs literary history may perhaps be borrowed from the most unreasonable of the arts—the art of dress. One of the powerful rulers of men, and therefore of books, is Fashion, and the fluctuations of literary fashion make up a great part of literary history. ”

“ In the adaptation of colors to complexions, and the style of dress to the particular form of the person; in avoiding the extremes of fashion, the excesses of ornament, and all approaches to immodesty—in all these respects a good taste can be displayed in dress, and thus charm us in every-day life. ”

“ Now, the first form fashion; whereas the last produce something far better and more enduring than fashion. Fashion often stands rebuked, in the presence of the last class, small as it ever is, numerically. ”

“ There is an ideal of beauty behind the fashion, a selected type of superiority, which must be assumed as the purpose of the fashion.
190. Fashion in other things than dress. As will appear below, fashion controls many things besides dress. It governs the forms of utensils, weapons, canoes and boats, tools, etc., amongst savages. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was a fashionable attitude or pose in standing for women, in which the abdomen was thrown forward. ”

“ One should study one’s appearance and find out for one’s self what colors, what tendencies in fashion are becoming to one, and resolutely strike others off the list. Reason, not fancy, nor altogether fashion, [155] should guide one in the choice of fabrics and tints. One’s manner of life should be considered in the selection of gowns, and the appropriate thing picked out for the anticipated occasion. ”

“ To obtain a dress, which to them is most unbecoming, or an article of furniture wholly unsuited to themselves and their establishment.
My own idea, and I believe it is founded upon a long-cherished, and perhaps too ardent admiration of personal beauty, is, that fashion ought to favour all which is most becoming. It is true, we should at first be greatly at a loss to know what was becoming, because we should have the power and the prejudice of fashion to contend with ”

“ It has still the same centre of perfection, though it is the centre of a smaller circle.—To illustrate this by the fashion of dress, in which there is allowed to be a good or bad taste. The component parts of dress are continually changing from great to little, from short to long ”

“ But fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean, and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath—tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fashion brought you forth, and she has seen to it that you are the image of your mother, knowing that if she made{91} you by a hair’s-breadth different, you would see what she is like and judge her. You are Fashion, Fashion herself, blind, fear-full Fashion! You do what you do because others do it ”

“ All this I see, and see that the fashion weares out more apparrell then the man; but art not thou thy selfe giddie with the fashion too that thou hast shifted out of thy tale into telling me of the fashion? ”

“ So among the women in the street: you shall see one whose bonnet and dress are one thing, and the lady herself quite another, wearing withal an expression of meek submission to her bonnet and dress; and another whose dress obeys and heightens the expression of her form.
More food for the comic is afforded whenever the personal appearance, the face, form, and manners, are subjects of thought with the man himself. No fashion is the best fashion for those matters which will take care of themselves. ”

“ By fashion all kinds of new things are started throughout the country, and you discover certain people who have a special aptitude. It becomes the fashion to do various things, and in many cases people become interested and develop their own special tastes and faculties. ”

“ It will, perhaps, be a form to which the eye is not quite accustomed; but we all know how extremely arbitrary is Fashion in her dealings with our outward appearance, and how anything which has received her sanction is for the time considered elegant and tasteful, while a few years later it may come to be looked upon as positively ridiculous. ”