A EEFORM LEAGUE FOR LADIES.

Southland Times, Issue 863, 11 December 1867, Page 3

A EEFORM LEAGUE FOR LADIES.

The Examiner, in an article on the vagaries of fashion, suggests two remedies for the growing evil:— One is a recognised and general liberty, everyone being left to suit the dress to the desires and means, the special need and comfort of the wearer. The day for that better plan may come as the world draws near to the millennium. As the world stands, a customary standard of dress is the only sure safeguard against that aspect of eccentricity in matters of small import, that false emphasis which — however strongly the French caricaturist may express his opposite opinion —we all know that Englishmen and Englishwomen alike shun, and show their sense in shunning. But if a standard of dress be inevitable, why should we leave the arrangement of it in the hands of traders who are, for the most part, wretchedly uneducated, whose only education has usualy been directed towards the extinction of all natural taste, and who have conspicuously misused their opportunities ? It should be no difficult task, and it would be no idle one, to establish in this country a ladies' committee — and why not with one of the princessess at its head ?—composed of such rank as would give authority to their decision upon points of fashion. These might receive suggestions, and adopt such as they found consistent with good taste, . and not necessarily of an excessive costliness, as a fit fashion of dress for an English lady. Let there be law still, but let us change the lawgivers. Let the ladies in their turn have a reformed Parliament for the enacting of their laws of fashion, and have a voice of their own in framing them. But as for the hair-dying and face-dying, all sensible women are free to laugh at that, and it will be their own fault if they do not put it quietly aside.