CURLS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 132, 24 July 1863, Page 3

CURLS.

“ Beauty is but skin deep” say old maids ; but then who is going to tear off the skin ? Beauty is harmony, after all, and perfect harmony is the highest effect even Xff-ovidential care can produce. Everything, however, slight, that can aid beauty towards full development, is an addition to the small modicum of happiness existing in the world, and the slighest phase of fashion has of necessity its own artistic force. We record, therefore, with hope, and not disdain, the fact that a change of fashion is possible in the matter of wearing the hair. Men, of course, remain as they have been for the last century, cropped like convicts, as if hair, like finger-nails and bad acquaintance, were chiefly of use for cutting. But women it is said, are no longer to be condemned to a single fashion for the head—to bind down rich hair and thin, auburn and grey, black and flaxen, in the same Quaker plaits. According to a letter in the ‘ Scotsman,’ written evidently in the truest spirit of scientific research, the Princess did enter London on the 7th of March with two long locks curling about her neck and the fashion has already found numerous devotees. We fancy the Princess rather sanctioned than introduced the fashion, for the two locks had been worn before, and had received, indeed, probably from some club man, who has forgotten the time when he recognised flirtation as the primary end of women, the sneering nickname of “follow-me-lads.” Be that as it may, the innovation is one to rejoice over, for fashion had grown almost as weary as human eyes of the existing mode of dressing the hair. Why should not the reform be carried farther ? If the Princess have but the spirit, she may break up the detestable routine once and for all, and if sire cannot produce the dissimilarity which nature seems to prefer—that unfashionable power making no two faces and no two leaves quite alike—she may at least give the English Female world the benefit of a double standard. All possibly may not follow her, for the highest class all over Europe keeps up uniformity as as a kind of test for caste, and uniformity needing a standard takes its pattern from French lorettes. But she would carry with her half the country, and a. mere choice, the right to decide on the less ugly idea, would be a boon to our country-women. Suppose the Princess tried a bonnet reconciieable in some faint or distant degree with the primary laws of art, with that one, for instance, which forbids the painter to paint an apple with a stalk twice as big as itself. Numbers might stick to the “spoon,” but then people with long faces might leave it alone, while people with short faces contin-

ued the much-admired design. At present both those whom it would become, if it could become anybody, and those who look in it like the faces one sees reflected in the back of a table-spoon, are equally condemned to its use. Or suppose, by a daring invasion of milliners’ rules, her Royal Highness reintroduced the only bit of real drapery this age has retained out of all the costumes its grandmothers were at pains to invent, the old three yards and three-quarters shawl. The courtiers of Paris might recoil, but the English lady would, at least, have the choice of giving herself some height and rectifying “the equalizing and therefore destructive elfect of crinoline on all figures. That privilege seems at reserved exclusively for the old. Or suppose, instead of compelling the tall and the short, the plump and the scraggy, alike to dine with bare shoulders, a great example revived with modifications the beautiful Josephine dress. As Josephine wore it, it was, perhaps, a little too beautiful for English ideas or climate, but that defect any milliner would correct, and it is in itself artistically perfect, the top of a riding habit thrown slightly open in front. Crinoline we dare not attack, for it will not be abolished ; but suppose there were two styles —a I’ Impt'ratrice, covering half a sofa, and a la Princesse, only wide enough to give a graceful dignity to the figure without utterly concealing the form. People straight from shoulder to heel would still have their prized defence, while those whom Nature had made lithe might retain that lissom beauty which was the grace of girlhood, till somebody in the interest of Sheffield developed crinoline into the “ cage.” It is a double standard that is required, somethink to break up this horrible uniformity, this dressing of women, not to set off their God-given beauty, but to sell milliners’ goods; and this the princess—if at the prayer of her sex she will but fight for a week —can give to those who for the past month have felt prouder for her arrival. — Spectator,