THE TYRANNY OF FASHION

Hokitika Guardian, 1 February 1932, Page 8

THE TYRANNY OF FASHION

One of the most remarkable features of Western civilisation is its insistence upon uniformity in personal appearance and, above all, in dress. In Europe, with a few limited local exceptions, all men dress alike, and even in Asia the Chinese Mandarin and Indian balm have come to substitute for their picturesque native attire the polished boots, the moraine fontanel the silk hat prescribed for respect ability by the arbiters of fashion in London and Paris. But Fashion exerts itself mqpt powerfully in the sphere of feminine social life. A short time ago an English judge, hearing a case in which a wife’s expenditure on clothes ' was the chief subject in dispute, remarked upon the almost irresistible authority exercised by those unseen powers that dictate and prescribe the form and colour and appearance that women’s clothing and other personal adornments must present. “Physical necessity is not the test,” said the Judge—“we must follow the lines of the social set in which we move; we must obey the direction of Fashion.”

Tt is possible that some of our readers may think this view of tyranny of Fashion exaggerated or extreme. Tn that ease we invite them to consider the “Fashion Review” for last year written for the “Daily Mail” by a lady who is evidently a recognised authority on such matters, and published in its Year Book for 19SThis lady, who no doubt deserves all the respect usually conceded to oracles in every walk of life, in her review tells incidentally the story of a revival of “the modes of I 860” in Paris last midsummer. Owing to the enthusiasm aroused in the French capital l>v the success of an operetta in which the women wore fantastic headgear fashionable in the middle of last century, -'ll June “nine smart Parisienes out of ten were wearing feathered howlers —round-crowned tip-tilted hats of the ‘sixties’, trimmed with monstrous ostrich feathers.” But there was worse to folow: for “from Paris the fashion spread with the incredible rapidity of the transport bom by air of the very last-minute models to London,” and the capital of our Empire was forthwith invaded by a flood of the floriforous and umbrageous hats worn long ago by our aunts and grandmothers.

Happily this craze did not last long, and the fact that the boom in feathered hosiers had “played itself out” at Home by August may help to explain why that special visitation did n,ot reach these distant shores. However, the lady who guides the destinies of the “Daily Mail’s” great feminine public supplies a great deal more evidence in support of our contention that the rule of Fashion is an, absolute spotism among women. In July there was fear in some quarters that clothes were to be “completely Victorian,” and that by the winter all the “best” women in England were to be reduced to “tight-lacing, crinolines and actual btstles.” The sequel can be told best in the lady’s own words; “1 flew over to Paris at once,” she tells us. “to obtain an important and exchisive interview on tile subject with o:.o <•! the most famous dress designers of to-

day, and the “Daily Mail” was in consequence able to set the minds of women at rest.” For Lord Harmsworth’s great newspaper was in a position to assure the women of England that they would not now need to wear tight corsets and hustles and crinolines unless they liked.

We fear that we have done something less than justice to the intense earnestness of the “Daily Mail” lady, the dignity with which she has invested her subject, and the gravity with which she records her trials and struggles iit Fashion’s cause. But what impresses us most- profoundly in all this is the fact that women—at least women “jn society”—-at Home seem perfectly satisfied to accept instructions and commands from these unseen and unknown guides regarding the sort of clothes that they must or may not wear. English women collectively—whether blonde or brunette, short or tall, plump or thin—were a few months ago in imminent danger of being condemned to adopt a uniform type of costume, irrespective of their own tastes or complexions, and entirely without regard to the physical inconvenience that the new fashions might entail. The fact that these tyrannical edicts were “made in Paris,” with the best hats arid frocks, would, but for - a happy accident, have reconciled them all to this intolerable bondage.

Hut men as well ns women suffer through these irresponsible decrees. In the Court ensc nlrendy mentioned the .Judge oxpresed his regrets tiint, heenuse women “are caught in the net of fashion and convention,” the lnis--1 anils have to ndjnst themselves to the changing standards of costume and etiquette created for the most part by foreign designers and dressmakers and milliners whose chief object is to make a handsome living out of their customers. The Judge, in the course of this case, extracted from various witnesses the admission that a fashionable woman would naturally expect to spend one-tenth of her husband’s income on dross, and that no self respecting member of any distinguished social ‘set” could think of wearing the same frock twice under the same conditions. The Judge in despair, asked “what lias become of tlie old spirit of thrift?” and counsel for the dressmakers promptly replied that it bad been ‘‘thrown to the four winds.” Apparently that is what I' -liiiin means Ln-day—the lu-s n| pci

sonal freedom, the subordination oi personal taste, the surrender of individuality to external dictation and control, and in too many cases reckless extravagance, that no excuse can justify. Surely the times are ripe for a social reformation that would break the yoke of Fashion and free the world from its oppresive and degrading tryanny.