NEW YORK GIRLS The Best-Dressed Ones Earn Their Own Money

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 200, 23 April 1887, Page 3

NEW YORK GIRLS The Best-Dressed Ones Earn Their Own Money

Till" manner in which our shop girls and clerks dress is a matter for amazement with all foreigners who visit Now York. To the European mind there is .something revolutionary and almost chaotic in the spectacle of work-folks "dressed like gentlemen and ladies," as they put it. It certainly is a remarkable feature of life in the metropolis. The fact is, however, that beyond the harmfulness of raising dress upon the pedestal of idolatrous regard, there is little else to rind fault with in the desire of our young toilers — for it is mainly the youths who dress so well — to appear genteel and even fashionable. They are not obliged either to steal or starve in order to dress well, as might be the case in a European capital. Every particle of the obstacle of cost that can be removed from their way is lifted, every device by which inferior goods may be made to assume the place of costly wear is resorted to, and every temptation to induce the young to do their utmost to feather themselves like fine birds is put in their path. Some time ago an ingenious Irishman in the Roman Catholic business hit upon the idea of offering the girls who were his customers a chance to buy clothing on instalments. The scheme caught like wildfire, and he is now a large dealer in women's furnishings — the Worth of servantgirldom. Girls who used not to be able to spend more than lOdol. or 12dol. for a dress, and who hid their poor calicoes and thin merinos under cloaks and shawls as ample as they could buy, now indulge in 50dol. and even lOOdol. dresses, and swing them as saucily along the streets on Sunday mornings as ever the pertest young belle of upper-ten circles vibrated a petticoat. A score or more of imitators of this pioneer friend of the domestic have sprung up in these sister cities, so that no girl has to go far with her instalments, and many a servant girl has a more costly " best dress " than her mistress boasts. But not for long does any girl enjoy this singular distinction. Not if we know the sex to which the fair employers belong 1 . Love of dress is as much a disease with mistress as with maid, and the woman who could sit patiently a second Sunday and see her servant sail forth in silks " that fairly stand alone " was born before the present generation. Our shopgirls are considerably ahead of the servonts in the art of providing themselves with clothes. Botting is sinful as well as uncertain ; but if it were not, I would wager a cart-wheel dollar against a little green apple that ours are the cutest

as well as the most graceful and prettiest shopgirls in America. lam so confident of this that I will lend the dollar to anyone who will make the bet. They dress sd well that strangers are for ever suspecting ill of their characters. The idea of thinking ill of a girl who gets up at daybreak to crack the ice in her pitcher for her morning's wash, and then works until dark for from 3dol. to sdol. a week ! If that is not a certificate of good character, let me know what is, please. But our shopgirls can do more with their pennies in the way of dress than many women of means do with their dollars. You show the average New York shopgirl what the fashion is, the latest dress pattern, or hat shape, or style of trimming, or drapery, or manner of wearing a thing, and then you see if she won't have it to a T next Sunday. The girls who work behind tho counters in our ladies' shopping stores number about 15,000. They leaven the whole lump. They learn all the tricks of beating tho devil of fashion around tho stump of economy. They learn all the arts and artifices of the women thoy wait on and all the subterfuges and saving devices of their associates behind the counters. Every night, like the carrier doves that flew from Beleaguered Paris, they scatter far and wide, retailing their discoveries and experiments among their friends of the factories and tenements and sewing-rooms and telephone centres, and wherever else women are who have not these chances for studying fashion. These girls handle all sorts of htufls, learn first of every bargain sale, and in imitating expensive goods with cheap ones, ,so as to produce the effects their richer bisters aim at, thoy have every advantage by being in the very sanctums and ser\ice of fashion • but above all elhO is their taste. They can fit each other or themselves ;\.^ well as ever a wiotfiv'e moulded a duchess, and when their clothes are on them they invest their very buttons and bustles with a chic anil pride of beaiing that mono) never yet lias bought. — American paper.