THE ART OF DRESS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9994, 15 March 1910, Page 4

THE ART OF DRESS.

Mrs Flora Annie Steel has advocated I in the "London Times" a tax upon woman's dress, on the grounds that dress is the luxury, if not the vice, of women, as tobacco and alcohol are the luxuries or the vices of men. Mrs Steel took as her text a quotation from a newspaper, which contained the information that women who intended to canvass were busy ordering costumes for the coming election campaign. "Velvet," it was remarked, "is the prevailing note in these charming creations, which seem ideal gowns for the occasion." Mrs Steel has a right to be indignant against the feminine passion for dress. Men, with their own peculiar passions and weaknesses, will do well to regard it with a scientific curiosity quite free I for contempt. Dress is not one of the most important things in the world; but is is certainly quite as important as many things upon which men spend a vast deal of time and trouble. Indeed, it is rather more J important than nowadays we are apt to suppose. It may be one of the minor arts but still an art, a means of expression in terms of beauty, and more closely connected with life than many of the greater arts. If we are to complain of women in this matter of dress we should complain not so much that they take time and trouble over it as that tney do not regard it enough as an art, a means of expression. The trouble is that the best of women are too apt to conceive of drags as a game rather than as an art, and as a game of which the rules are fixed and fre- , quently altered, not by themselves, but by their drem-nakers. Hence their clothes sorneiimes look both ugly and frivolous, just because they lock irrelevant. Men's clothes are certainly ugly enough, but their ugliness is less tiresome because it does not attempt to express anything. It is, in the main, the result of a desire to spend as little time and trouble upon dress as possible. It is not art at all, and with all its uglines&, it is not so depressing as bad ait, being the result not of failure, but of mere indifference. Dress, 1 if it is to be an art at all, must be ] difficult, like all arts. It needs ' "fundamental brain work," as well as money aud time, and those who cannot give brain work to it would be wise to spend as little time and money on it as possible.