MODERN EXTRAVAGANCE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3028, 27 October 1908, Page 3

MODERN EXTRAVAGANCE

The modern woman, and, to a lesser degree, the modern man, are constantly being condemned from their extravagance in dress, and it is sometimes said that a woman of today will spend more on a hat than her great-gandmother did on her whole trousseau, says a London paper. No one would deny modern extravagance in this direction, but a well-known French writer contends that the upper and middle classes really spend less to-day than their ancestors did a century or two ago. Careful researches among private documents for those times show that extravagance was far worse then than now. Men spent quite as much if riot , more, than women on their clothes. A middle-class man 150 years ago wore night-cuffs cf lace, required several kinds of stockings, half-a-dozen hats, five or six different kinds of boots, and spent several pounds a year on his hair. Men wore ribbons, lace, embroideries and jewellery in as large quantities as women. Certain gentlemen's suits cost as much as £6OO, and three of these were required by each guest for great wedding festivals. These, of course, were exceptions. An "elegant" man could "manage" with six summer and six winter suits, at £IOO a piece. I This did not include the gold orj silver buttons or the lace. A bride I who was married in Paris in 1720, and whose wedding was "elegant," but by no means a great affair, was bought several gowns varying from £l5O to £4OO, while her Court dress, which could be worn only a few times, cost £BOO. Another society woman possessed 500 dozen cambric handkerchiefs, 480 shirts and 60 pairs of corsets. Hospitality then was on a far greater scale than it is now. It would be difficult even for the wealthy owner of a great mansion to place all the year round 700 beds at the disposal of his friends, as did M. de Rohan at his castle of Saverne. One hundred and eighty horses were always ready to be saddled for his guests, and 600 beaters were used daily by him during the shooting season. The bills of one establishment show that the members of it consumed 30 sheep a month, 5,0Q9 chickens a year, and 3001b of "bread every day. Gambling went on everywhere, often on an enormous scale, while one of the diversions of a gentleman was lawsuits. "My grandfather had thirty-three suits; he won every one of them, and it cost him several thousands," said a man at the beginning of the 19th century. Life in these days was not so simple as many people think.