Lady of fashion

“ Is it to show their entire contempt for the principles of design that our manufacturers introduced last year not only horizontal stripes of conspicuous colors, but checks and plaids of immense size, as autumnal fashions for dress fabrics? We had hoped that the ladies would show the correctness of their taste by their disapproval of these unbecoming designs, but the prevalence of the fashion at the present time is another evidence of the triumph of fashion over good taste. ”

“ If girls would rise above this, and desire to express by their dress the attributes of true ladyhood, [Pg 258] nicety of eye, fastidious neatness, purity of taste, truthfulness, and sincerity of nature, they might form, each one for herself, a style having its own individual beauty, incapable of ever becoming common and vulgar.
"A truly trained taste and eye would enable a lady to select from the permitted forms of fashion such as might be modified to her purposes, always remembering that simplicity is safe, that to attempt little, and succeed, is better than to attempt a great deal, and fail. ”

“ Fashion in dress is usually dictated by caprice or accident, or by the desire of novelty. It is never, we believe, based upon the study of the figure.
It is somewhat singular that while every lady thinks herself at liberty to wear any textile fabric or any color she pleases, she considers herself bound to adopt the form and style of dress which the fashion of the day has rendered popular. The despotism of fashion is limited to form, but color is free. ”

“ 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. ”

“ First and foremost, she was beautiful, dressed well, and very expensively, and, from the exercise of her allowed talents, never failed to give the uninitiated an idea that she was the woman of fashion par excellence. ”

“ A lady's "full dress" is not easily defined, and fashion allows her greater scope for the exercise of her taste in the selection of materials, the choice of colors, and the style of making. Still, she must "be in the fashion." ”

“ Although Paris may be accounted the soil in which almost every fashion takes its rise, its influence [Pg 174] is never so general there as with us. They study there the happy method of uniting grace and fashion, and never excuse a woman for being awkwardly dressed, by saying her clothes are in the mode. A Frenchwoman is a perfect architect in dress; she never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out a squabby Doric shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to general fashion only when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leaving now the caprices of fashion, we must notice a class of persons who, from a religious motive, have resisted for two hundred years the tyranny of fashion, and until recently have transmitted the same form of dress from mother to daughter for nearly the same period of years. ”

“ In the middle of her reign the body was imprisoned in whalebone, and the fardingale, the prototype of the modern hoop, was introduced, as it was not to be supposed that a lady who is said to have left three thousand dresses in her wardrobe would remain faithful to the fashions of her grandmother; and Elizabeth's love of dress permeated all classes of society.
The portrait of Mary Queen of Scots, who was considered an authority on matters of the toilet, and whose taste for elegance of apparel had been cultivated to a high degree during her residence at the French Court is given. ”

“ We all know that the love of beauty is inherent in all women—just as the pride of personal appearance is inherent in all men. It is a heritage brought down through generations of slowly developing culture. And we find to-day that Fashion is the means of expressing individuality.
It would indeed be a Herculean task to attempt to write a discourse on the ever-changing dictates of Fashion, on the constant whims and vagaries of Style. Each season brings forth striking new dress innovations—new colorings, new draperies, new lines. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What a singular existence is that of a woman of fashion, a life made up of a series of efforts to charm the most selfish and ungrateful half of the human race. When once a woman is recognised as a leader of fashion, when it is admitted that she dresses well, and always in the latest and most becoming style, that she is charming or witty, the poor woman no longer belongs to herself. She is simply one of the stars of that brilliant crown that Paris wears on its forehead every evening. ”

“ It’s the very latest fashion.”
“Why is it,” asked the Philosopher, “that women are such slaves to fashion? They think clothes, they talk clothes, they read clothes, yet they have never understood clothes. The purpose of dress, after the primary object of warmth has been secured, is to adorn, to beautify the particular wearer. Yet not one woman in a thousand stops to consider what colours will go best with her complexion, what cut will best hide the defects or display the advantages of her figure. If it be the fashion, she must wear it. ”

“ With simplicity and the graces, Fashion has seldom exhibited any inclination to cultivate an acquaintance. Now, the ladies being, in their very nature, form, and feature, the living representatives of these virtues, I am the more surprised that they should be the especial patrons of Fashion, seeing that its efforts are more directed to conceal a defect, by making it more deformed, than to lend a charm to elegance, or an adornment to beauty. ”

“ The variety of their dresses and figures, the satisfaction which they express in seeing and being seen, their anxious desire to please, which constitutes their happiness and that of our sex, the triumph which animates the countenance of those who eclipse their rivals; all this forms a diversified and amusing picture, which fixes attention, and gives birth to a thousand ideas respecting the art and coquetry of women, as well as what beauty loses or gains by adopting the ever-varying caprices of fashion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. 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. ”

“ What is there in our highly civilized life that escapes the palsying touch of Fashion? Dress, what is it? Fashion from head to foot. No matter if it outrages all physiology, puts hands around the lungs, gauze on the feet, and hangs multitudinous skirts upon the most vital and yielding portions of the female system. What of all that? Fashion is superior to health and life. What if it shrivel a woman into a mummy, and fade her into a ghost, and plant in her vitals the never-dying worm of consumption! What is beauty and physical womanhood to Fashion? ”

“ Women’s dress can easily be modified and adapted to any exigencies of the kind; but most women refuse to modify or adapt it. They must follow the fashion, whether it be convenient or the reverse. And, after all, what is a fashion? ”

“ As for example, combine a semi-picture hat with a semi-tailored dress.
The strictly chic woman of our day goes in for appropriateness; the lines of the latest fashion, but adapted to bring out her own best points, while concealing her bad ones, and an insistance upon a colour and a shade of colour, sufficiently definite to impress the beholder at a glance. This type of woman as a rule keeps to a few colours, possibly one or two and their varieties, and prefers gowns of one material rather than combinations of materials. Though she possess both style and beauty, she elects to emphasise style. ”

“ Because a foul-hearted murderess [2] elected to be hanged in this material, Englishwomen refused for years to wear it, and many bales of black satin languished on the drapers' shelves,—a memorable instance of the significance which attaches itself to dress. The caprices of fashion do more than illustrate a woman's capacity or incapacity for selection. They mirror her inward refinements, and symbolize those feminine virtues and vanities which are so closely akin as to be occasionally undistinguishable. ”

“ Love of Dress.—To love dress is not to be a slave of fashion; to love dress only is the test of such homage. To transact the business of charity in a silken dress, and to go in a carriage to the work, injures neither the work nor the worker. The slave of fashion is one who assumes the livery of a princess, and then omits the errand of the good human soul; dresses in elegance, and goes upon no good errand, and thinks and does nothing of value to mankind.
3. Beauty in Dress.—Beauty in dress is a good thing, rail at it who may. ”

“ Under the new impulse—the new inspiration of the mid-century from the purer and simpler lines, forms, and colours of early mediaeval art, the dress of women in our own time may be said to have been quite transformed for a while, and though the pendulum of fashion swings to and fro, it does not much affect, except in some small details, a distinct type of dress which has become associated with artistic people—those who seriously study and consider of the highest value and importance beautiful and harmonious surroundings in daily life. ”

“ Genuine ladies of fashion are able to form an opinion of those painted beauties who receive so much commendation in an artificial light; the little hat, following a new mode of the Marquise de Bois l’Hery, confronts the more than modest toilette of some artist’s wife or daughter; while the model who posed for that beautiful Andromeda at the entrance, goes by victoriously, clad in too short a skirt, in wretched garments that hide her beauty beneath all the false lines of fashion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A plain straw bonnet, with only a ribbon across it, is in reality in better taste than rubbishy birds or butterflies, or tinsel ornaments.
“Finally, girls, don’t dress at haphazard; for dress, so far from being a matter of small consequence, is in reality one of the fine arts,—so far from trivial, that each country ought to have a style of its own, and each individual such a liberty of modification of the general fashion as suits and befits her person, her age, her position in life, and the kind of character she wishes to maintain. ”

“ As for the marchioness's dresses, the milliner and dress-maker furnish her with them for exhibition every season, make her wear the new styles, a little ridiculous sometimes, but instantly adopted by society, because Madame is still a very beautiful woman, and of high repute in the matter of fashion ”

“ For another reason, also, we are preoccupied of our costume,—our invincible frankness; for we would have our clothes the expression of our souls. With what fondness we cling to the frock that suits us! Such a bundle of subtleties is woman that words are too gross—a black coat and trousers an insincerity—for the hundred shades of shifting color and form that we are inside. Though it take half our life, let us be true to our clothes, our clothes to us; let the dress be the lady, and the lady a symphony of soul and silk. ”