CUSTOMS IN DRESS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 98, 19 January 1935, Page 17

CUSTOMS IN DRESS

Survival Through Years The reason why barristers wear black gowns and why many other antiquated sartorial eccentricities still persist was humorously explained in London a few weeks ago by Mr. Wilfrid Mark Webb, the 'biologist, who is secretary of the Seibourne Society. Lecturing at the Horniman Museum on conservatism in clothes, Mr. Webb said the idea that people were fickle in regard to dress fashions was a slander. “We are all horribly conservative in the matter of clothes,” he said, “and when we once have a thing, we like to keep it whether there is a real reason for it or not, just as we cling to our appendix, the biological vestige of days when we were vegetarians, like rabbits. “That was why nuns and sisters of mercy wore three head-dresses and the silk-hatted city man wore a useless ribbon round his head gear,” Mr. Webb went on. The latter was a relic of the fillet with which women 4000 years ago bound a loose fabric around their heads. The Knights of the Garter formerly wore a short cape and hood, known as a chaperon. After dining not wisely but very well, the dandies of a later day often found difficulty in donning their red chaperons. So they put them on like a wet towel, flopping over their faces, and earned the title of “coxcombs.” Barristers still wore the chaperon attached to the back of their gowns, and they wore black gowns because they went into mourning for Queen Anne. Queen Anne was still dead, so they kept on mourning. Mr. Webb said he found the investigation of the cockade a worry. “I wrote to the Lord Chamberlain as to whose servants are entitled to use it.” he said. “I was informed, most courteously, that it was entirely a matter for the Herald’s College. So I wrote to them, and was told, again most courteously, that it was entirely a matter for the Lord Chamberlain.” The busby of the Hussar was the result of Army officers’ jealously said Mr. Webb. It was originally a ciotli cap with a narrow edging of fur worn by Hungarian mercenaries in rhe British Army. The uniform of the soldiers was then in accordance with the colonel’s purse. One colonel put on two inches of fur, another four, and so on. until it was all fur but the top. The clocks on ladies’ hose were put on to hide the gusset seams when the stockings were of cloth. They remained, because the perforated cloth gave the artistic effect of tattooing without the pain, and could be lengthened or shortened to suit the length ot skirts. That the soldier wears many buttons on his-sleeves to prevent the “Tommies” using them as handkerchiefs was another slander, according to Mr. Webb They were there as vestiges of sleeves so tight that they had to be unbuttoned before the coat came off. A man’s coat buttons were on the right side because once this gave him easy access to his dagger. But why the buttons on a woman’s dress were on the left side, Mr. Webb confessed, remains a mystery.