Wardrobe

“ We supplemented our old furniture with some new articles from the bazaars. A dressing-table of walnut, a wardrobe with mirror doors, and cretonne curtains with a design of little roses. Soon, we found ourselves installed with a degree of comfort we had not hitherto known. ”

“ If the wardrobe be sufficiently large to hold each kind of garment separately, it will be so much the better, as the coats and other articles may then be laid in smoothly and at length, as soon as they are brushed and cleaned, and a brown Holland cloth may be spread over each drawer or shelf, to preserve them from the dust. ”

“ Her simple wardrobe is systematically arranged, and it is impossible to displace a single article in her drawers, without her perceiving and reinstating it. When the large baskets of clean linen are weekly brought from the laundress, she selects her own garments without hesitation, however widely they may be dispersed among the mass. ”

“ And we would heartily recommend a fluffy little evening wrap to go with the gown. Then, of course, there are the little strapped slippers and the low-cut sports shoes to be considered.
One is pretty sure to be happy under the blue skies of the tropics if one's wardrobe contains a plentiful supply of gay, colorful frocks, blouses and sports things. But one need not postpone the visit because clothes seem to be expensive; common sense, good judgment and a small purse go a long way. ”

“ Long flat "wardrobe trunks" are sold, which contain at one end rods for hanging clothes, so that, when stood up on the other end against the wall they serve as wardrobes. They always look, however, like makeshifts, and so are more useful in travelling than in the home. ”

“ Let the hair be always smooth and becomingly arranged, each article exquisitely clean, neat collar and sleeves, and tidy shoes and stockings, and the simplest dress will appear well, while a torn or soiled collar, rough hair, or untidy feet will entirely ruin the effect of the most costly and elaborate dress. The many articles required in a lady's wardrobe make a neat arrangement of her drawers and closets necessary, and also require care in selecting and keeping goods in proper order. ”

“ Let every piece of cloth and linen, yea, every napkin and kerchief, and skein of thread be taken down and folded anew, and the shelves wiped clean of dust and mold, and let all presses and drawers be filled with fresh rose leaves, lavender and southernwood. Leave not your work either for meal-time or recreation till it is finished; and when I next visit the wardrobe let me find the neatness and order befitting a religious house. Public penance may be well, but secret humility and faithfulness are far better. ”

“ Those points found to be desirable, becoming, beautiful, comfortable, appropriate, séduisant—what you will—are taken as the foundation of the next wardrobe order, and with this inside information from women who know (know the subtle distinction between daring lines and colours, which are good form, and those which are not) , the men or women who give their lives to creating costumes proceed to build. ”

“ WARDROBE, a portable upright cupboard for storing clothes. The earliest wardrobe was a chest, and it was not until some degree of luxury was attained in regal palaces and the castles of powerful nobles that separate accommodation was provided for the sumptuous apparel of the great. The name of wardrobe was then given to a room in which the wall-space was filled with cupboards and lockers—the drawer is a comparatively modern invention. From these cupboards and lockers the modern wardrobe, with its hanging spaces, sliding shelves and drawers, was slowly evolved. ”

“ Owing to this fact, we are now able to learn from the few but tattered shreds before us what elegantly designed and gorgeous stuffs the foreign mediæval loom could weave, and what beautiful embroidery our own countrywomen knew so well how to work. These specimens help us also to rightly understand the description of the splendid vestments enumerated with such exactness in the old inventories of our cathedrals and parish churches, as well as in the early wardrobe accompts of our kings, and in the wills and bequests of dignified ecclesiastics and nobility. ”

“ There should be a high clothes-closet or wardrobe in which costumes may be hung. Where this is impractical, there should be sufficient hooks to accommodate a number of costumes, and means of covering them with a cloth to protect them from dust. ”

“ Our bedding, though only of cotton, is, we decide, softer and nicer than linen and wool; and the pink quilt that covers both beds, could, we declare, scarce be told from silk. Our wardrobe—what is easier than to make a broad shelf about six feet high, and hang from it chintz curtains behind which a dozen hooks are screwed into the wall. ”

“ Your dressing gown is to hang behind the door; there is a hook here for your bath towel, which, by the by, you are never to leave in the bathroom; your sponge must go in the lefthand sponge basket, and your bedroom slippers under this chair. Your coats must, of course, always be kept in the wardrobe, but your boots are to go downstairs. You may lay your writing case and paintbox on the chest of drawers, or keep them in your locker in the playroom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For rooms which are not old-fashioned in style, and in which it is yet not possible to indulge in French consoles or Indian cabinets as places to keep clothes in, then I would recommend the essentially modern simple style of wardrobe and chest of drawers. ”

“ I have an evening dress, pink mull over silk (I'm perfectly beautiful in that) , and a blue church dress, and a dinner dress of red veiling with Oriental trimming (makes me look like a Gipsy) , and another of rose-coloured challis, and a grey street suit, and an every-day dress for classes. That wouldn't be an awfully big wardrobe for Julia Rutledge Pendleton, perhaps, but for Jerusha Abbott—Oh, my! ”

“ The outfit a girl of the middle class should take with her, in order that she might command the proper respect of her new relatives, should include three red trunks, one table, two chairs, one wardrobe, three tubs, two buckets, one washstand, one dressing-case, a set of scissors, a footstove, a teapot, wine-pot, two candlesticks, a basin, sugar-bowl, tea-caddy, one set of cups, a complete set of bowls and dishes, two wadded quilts, two embroidered pillows, embroidered curtain for the bed, and a complete outfit of clothing. ”

“ In all ages man has sought to develop to their fullest extent the possibilities of splendour in the materials of his dress, and an important place in the wardrobes of our early ancestors was filled by skins shorn of hair, thus lending themselves easily to decoration in many different ways. ”

“ The Furniture too is old-fashion'd and not very rich, which is somewhat unaccountable, because the Wardrobes are full of costly Pieces of Tapestry, stately Pictures, and other fine Goods which probably they are restrained from making use of by the Etiquette. ”

“ But there are perfectly simple, inoffensive wardrobes to be procured of varnished pine or even deal (and the former wears the best) which, if it can only be kept free from scratches, is at least in good taste and harmony in a modern, commonplace bedroom. It is quite possible, however by the exercise of a little ingenuity to dispense with modern, bought wardrobes, and to invent something which will hold clothes, and yet be out of the beaten track. ”

“ It is very evident from the accommodation provided in the distant days when such wardrobes were designed, that "little and good" used to be the advice given to our grandmothers with their pin-money, and that even in their wildest dreams they never beheld the countless array of skirts and polonaises and mantles and Heaven knows what beside, that furnish forth a modern belle's equipment. ”

“ It used to be difficult, nay well nigh impossible, to buy really good and suitable dressing-room furniture, and I have had many a painful hunt after wardrobes which were not evidently meant for the raiment of females alone ”

“ To [Pg 25] a new house, furnished according to the present rage for old-fashioned decoration, our modern sombre apparel is no help. We do not lighten up our rooms a bit now by our dress, except perhaps in summer, but generally we sit, clad in dingiest tints of woollen material, or in very inartistic black silk, amid furniture which was originally designed as a sort of background to much gay and gallant clothing, to flowered sacques and powdered heads, to bright steel buttons and buckles and a thousand points of colour and light. ”

“ What people had shed and left—a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes—those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. ”

“ All women of fashion bought clothes when it would not have occurred to them to buy furniture—when it would have seemed preposterous to buy a piece of jewelry—but clothes, clothes, and more clothes, each more hand-embroidered than the last, until just as it seemed that no dress was fit to be seen if it hadn't a month or two of some one's time embroidered on it, the work on clothes subsided, until now we are at the other extreme ”

“ How deliciously keen and new was this consciousness of clothes—the smart high-laced boots, the soft, sand-colored coat and skirt, the knickers which felt so easy and so trim, the cool, silk shirt with its wide collar, the dainty, intimate things beneath! She would have been less than woman, had the possession of these things failed to meet some need,—some instinct, deep within, which her old, bare life had daily mortified. ”

“ A few years ago it took about sixteen yards of common-width cloth to make a dress for a lady, for she wanted two or three yards to drag in the streets, to be smeared by every nuisance she walked over. Now I suppose they make their dresses out of five yards and a half, and then have abundance left for an apron. They put me now strongly in mind of the ladies I used to see in Canada some years ago, who made their dresses out of two breadths of tow and linen, and when they were in meeting they were all the time busy pulling them down, for they would draw up. ”

“ Striking attractiveness, rather than simple good taste, seems to be the spirit of modern dress. To see a beautiful young woman in gaudy clothes is as disappointing as seeing a romantic old Spanish tale bound in a cheap paper cover.
How much more delightful is a simple frock, developed of rich materials, and boasting only deep soft folds of the material as decoration, than an elaborate gown with rows and rows of imitation gold lace! ”

“ Dress and furniture are allowed by all the world to be entirely under the dominion of custom and fashion. The influence of those principles, however, is by no means confined to so narrow a sphere, but extends itself to whatever is in any respect the object of taste, to music, to poetry, to architecture. The modes of dress and furniture are continually changing, and that fashion appearing ridiculous to-day which was admired five years ago, we are experimentally convinced that it owed its vogue chiefly or entirely to custom and fashion. ”

“ And now contrast all this with the extreme poverty of the dress of the present day, and turn our thoughts for a moment to those terrible cylindrical enormities the pot-hat and trousers.
Dress? we don't dress—we simply cover our nakedness—as in architecture we are content if we keep out wind and wet. We have forgotten how to dress as we have forgotten how to build, and beauty has forsaken dress as it has forsaken the rest of the decorative arts. Dress is, or should be, one of the decorative arts ”

“ All such bits of furniture and finery of foreign manufacture contrast meanly with their own old-fashioned kind. Altogether, in dress and home gear, they are so meanly mixed, savage and civilized, that they make a most pathetic impression. ”

“ Tables, chairs, consoles, all are covered, and we have no place to put our feet; enormous quantities of dresses, mantles, veils, petticoats, capes, caps, hats, are scattered about the house; and when you reflect that they are all to go on the bodies of seven or eight people, you involuntarily think of the jugglers at a fair who wear eight or ten coats one over the other, and you cannot realize that from all that mass only one costume for each will emerge. ”

“ How well each in its way is calculated to serve the purpose for which it is designed, the simple cloth, tweed, or serge costume moulded to the lines of the figure, adapted to our changeful climate, and giving a cachet to the wearer, not always found in much more costly apparel, a rational costume in the best sense of the word, and one which women of all ages may assume with satisfaction to themselves and to those with whom [Pg 11] they come in contact. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Turning from the aspects of houses to humans—take modern dress—in our search for the beautiful! Well National if not distinctive costume—except of the working and sporting sort, court dress, collegiate robes and uniforms—has practically disappeared, and, apart from working dress in working hours, one type of ceremonial, or full dress, is common to the people at large, and that of the plainest kind, with whatever differences of cut and taste in detail. ”