FEMALE DRESS

Temuka Leader, Issue 205, 2 December 1879, Page 2

FEMALE DRESS

To (lie la.ii. s their drafts have alwavs beea a subject of ilie tleejiest- concern, .".nu the la-lies wf today arc neitlur better nor worse ih this respect than those of t;:cir sex who lived in too last century, or, indeed, at any o'her time tince the prinunal fig-leaves ware discarded. During the last two or three hundred yt ars the female dress has undergone nearly as many changes and modifications as there are hairs upon the female head. The body has been long an . short ; loose and tight-fitting ; trimmed, and plane and bare ; hooked behind and hooked in front; built up close to the chin, and cut down to—well, more or inches below the shoulder. The skirt, too, has passed through every gradation of "fulness," as well as of length. First, a little fulness at the back ; then a little fulness tft the front; 'then, & little fulness all round the waist ; and then, much fulness everywhere—and all soon to be succeeded by exact opposites! And then what frills, tucks, and flounces; gathers, plaits, and folds ; basques, kilts and under skirts ; polonaises, panniers, and aprons, braids, and other "beautifiers" sashes, gimp*, and fringes, with all tueir multifarious adaptions! Surely, there was never such an everchanging inconsistent, whimsical thing in this world as the skirt of a woman's dress ! And as to the length of th? skirt? Well sometimes its length has extended to a few inches below the knee, at other times it has been so long as to necessarily trail the ground ; between those extremes the lengths of the skirt has unceasingly graduated. Now, if the satirical pencil thrusts of Hogarth and his compeers, Leech, and those cf his time, were resultless ; if the faultless diction of Addison, the uncompromising and emphatic wit of Steele, the direct and pungent sarcasm of Pope, and the spiritual admonitions of divines like Bishop Berkely were without avail ; if tue square acres of space devote I by the old Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, &c, to the habilimentary absurdities and extravagances of a past age were so much waste of space and printers ink, what hope of success can we have in our tilt against female dress. Irony, ridicule, and sarcasm are weapons which, as we have seen, have always proved innocuous : but we have an advantage over our predecessors because the tendency of female dress is, to 6peak with becoming mildness, slightly voluptuous. It is singularly strange that this bhould be so ; for whatever he the faults of the age, the average English lady of to-day has a sense of modesty and an uncompromising hatred of indecency or anything that bejirs the slightest to it which we believe lias never been equalled and certainly never excelled. Upon these points, therefore, our modern English lady may he vulnerable, though for sarcasm and ridicule she has a supreme contempt. Now, a year or two ago the skirt was full and ample, but the fashion was to tightly stretch the dress round the body, whilst a ridiculms ugly lump of dress stuff was piled up and carried behind which gave the wearers the appearance of erect kangaroos. This fashion, neither lovely nor mo'est, lias passed away, but it has been succeeded by a fashion which if decidedly more sest?'etic is decidedly more immodest. We do not desire our ladies to envelope themselves as thickly and heavily as the ladies of Russia during a severe winter, or to make themselves resemble an engirdled feather bed after the style of the Esquimau--We are not anxious for them to adopt-the Grecian underskirt, the bloomer costume 01 the fuller trousers of the Turkish snd Indian ladies ; and we heartily pray them to eschew the more recent American eccentricity which Mrs Mary E Tillotson of New Jersey, described two years ago at the congre'ss on female dress at Philadelphia, as the "comfort-favouring,: labor-lightening, life-preserving, -garmentnre of dual form for tie legs. 1 ' But we do not. wish war ladies to dress in such a manner that the words—• indecent, sonsunl, immodest, voluptuous cpnnot by any process of reasoning, tortuous or "direct, be justly used towards them.

Now, the two primary object'-; of dresv. are warmth and decency ; 'with the firs' we have here nothing to do, but the hu : named is all important to our pre.:?.-.r purpose. From ridiculous amplitude ot skirt and bodice the ladie« seem to ho fast flying to the uttercst «ct;envj. Jackets, mantles, shawls, and wraps are becoming rapidly scarce ; and it :s the present delight and ambition of our incomparable women, it would seem, to appear in the public stream m their " figure." Fashion is a tyrant; a year or twtTngo it would hyve been deemed an utter impropriety for a lady to nave 'rs.'ii seen a hundred yards from her Home ivi ' her " figure!" But still we should not : so much ohjnct to the present fashion u the "figure " were not displayed 50 vc 17 distinetiy—every indentation, or protuberance of the body is mhC.e to very plainly declare itself. At the preseiu moment, in fact, with the _ tomperaruro at fever heat, the female attivo is so attenuated and close clinging as in set oil and display in the minutest dssviay m the minutest detail the whole contour of the frame which it is ostensibly meant to veil. With every step the very wcr.cing of the muscles is pabaoly evid«it> and we are almost persiia-'i-.';i yu?i she female portion of society arc bt-g-inumg to too practically before in tin: a ap that " beauty unadorned is ado.-ied t-nt most." Modesty is relative. W ;?n we see a i' : "*h vvom.ni ■"''■'■ 'A forging fui : '■"•'■}['• :i,T Dt -/ Lurden on her hen;:, n■ ~ :iip- ; •••'■'■ ngr and her whole - l :-.-.-:3y GM:iiUt,;n ■. w: every step, we pity the hard lot \.'h;

compels her thus to public./ c-libit herself —and that is all ; "good society," or the blithe and graceful w.nng lady, unnecessarily exhibiting herself in the public streets in an analagous fashion, the sight appears to us exceedingly vulgar, and seems to bear a striking likeness to simple refinement of indecency. It has been said, written, and sung, hundreds of times,t<iat the loveliest wo>k of wad is the divine figure of a lovely '■woman, but this truth does not warrant the exposure of the female form voluptuously and too barely clad. To cover the body is one thing, to chastely and gracefully drape it is another thing entirely.

Not only is the female dress of the present moment scant, tight, and bare, but it covers forms that are apparently of wonderful perfection. A faulty figure can scarcely be descried iri the street now ! The tendency is decidedly too embonpoint with every bodily thing to match. This all makes the matter worse. Whether some of the perfect figures we see daily are simply perambulating falsities ; to what extent the females who walk about so pronouncedly and symmetrically developed are acting a lie, it is, or course, impossible for u* to say A few days ago, however, it was our privilege to view the stock-in-trade of a corsetmaker, and we then saw such a heap of pads, of single and dual form of all sizes, colors, makes, and shapes, as was revelation to us ; and now when •we meet one of these closely-trimmed, well-developed matrons, or damsels, we cannot help wondering if the form we see before us is all real, live flesh and bleod, or whether a very considerable portion of it is composed of horsehair, straw, or dried seaweed.