THE GREAT DRESS QUESTION.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 32, 3 November 1894, Page 11

THE GREAT DRESS QUESTION.

I have received an interesting letter from Etta, in which she says her opinion is “ That onr country is being governed to death, and that the best thing that could happen would be for the people to rise in revolt, abolish both Houses, and govern the country with, say three able men with an efficient staff under them.” This, she thinks, would be a decided improvement on the present system of government. She goes on to advise my readers to give bicycle riding in rational dress a trial, and adds : “ While on the subject of dress reform, I cannot do better than give an extract from a letter of Mrs Burn’s I received lately, for alas ! that is all there is left for me to do, for when I think of something to say it is only to find that someone has been before me and already said it.” The following is the extract referred to ; —“ The feeling gixnvs slowly but steadily here (Christchurch) rational dress being freely granted in .the papers forcycling and camping, but of course the great majority make no move towards emancipation in practice, however they prate in theory. We are making a dead set against corsets and whalebone. I believe the move against these barbarities grows large and strong. The moderates are with us here of coarse, but they would have us stop at the loose shoulder robes, but as Mrs Francis Russel says ‘ Ho woman can go about her business dressed like any sculptured Venus I ever saw.’ The art robes are all very pretty for carpets and luxurious lounges not to mention the highly emotional and sensational surroundings generally but they are ridiculous in the street or on the tennis court. I foresee that a higher ideal of woman’s dress must be the outcome of the new gospel of the sexes. And I contend the Greek drapery ideal is not the highest, though many grades in advance of Parisian fashion. A close study of the ethical basis of this movement shows me more clearly everyday that clinging, dragging, confining drapery is responsible for more of the present slave condition of the sex than most people are aware. If the outer is the expression of the inner,—then in what veritable bondage must women’s souls languish ! But we pioneers have a foot on the first step of the ladder of physical freedom, and it has become one of the signs of the times that women no longer subordinate all to personal appearance. They say reformers must necessarily be men and women of one idea only—one idea that consumes them, and excludes all other problems as of secondary importance only. There never was so shallow an utterance. Reformers must be men and women of all ideas, it seems to me; not one progressive movement should escape their notice, and all are equally important in the great economies of natural law and evolution. One cannot make a study of one movement without find-

ing oneself on the borderland of a dozen others, all bearing on our main study too, and demanding attention.” She then goes on to state her reasons for being a dress reformer, and shows that it is impossible for women and men to be intellectually equal unless the former in the first instance reform their dress.