MERELY AN IDEA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 183, 29 September 1876, Page 13

MERELY AN IDEA.

+1 ■ ■ A great reformer should he be, who would introduce a rational Btyle of dress into the world of fashionable ladies, and further secure its continuance for even one generation. Whatever might be thought of the importance of his work, it certainly could not be denied that he was a man of eminent genius ; for there are few of us that have attained to anything like mature age who cannot recall to mind inan> freaks of the female taste, and amongst them several that seemed to originate in a desire to distort the appearance of the frame, so far as it was capable of distortion. It was the custom some years ago, and for aught we know to the contrary it may be so still, for the ladies of Paris yearly to repair to a -well-known promenade named Longs-Champs, where the leaders of ton appeared in a style of attire that influenced the matter for the seasons ensuing ; and the day chosen, for this edifying exhibition was, strange to say, Good Friday. But the choice of a day had, we believe, been regulated by iccident, for in old times a convent Lad stood upon the ground, and this was accustomed to be visited by numbers of people who went for the sake of being present at special devotions that were held there during Passion Week ; but the convent was demolished, and the devotional visits made way for the parades of fashion. Here then, we conclude, arose those various modes which we have seen carried to so great an excess ; crinolines that conferred upon their wearers something of the appearance of inverted balloons, and to which some gloomy associations are attached since they were the cause of so many deaths from burning ; bonnets reduced to the dimensions of two straws and a rosebud that have ■been the prolific source of neuralgia; piles of foreign matter loaded upon the head, under the specious pretence of being hair ; boots and bends which confer upon the human form the similitude of an apteryx, with other enormities of the kind too numerous to chronicle. One of the most striking features in an European Continental . city is the absence of that look of shabbiness that mars the appearance of the towns of the United Kingdom, and it is chiefly owing to the fact that the class of garments known as " slops " are but little worn ; for lai'ge numbers of people are dressed in uniforms, blouses, or the costumes of their provinces, and the effect is striking. But more especially is it remarkable that the garb of females is there destitute of the faded and thread-bare appearance so lamentably evident in the streets of towns in the British Islands, and the cause of this is that maid or matron, when poor, are not driven to the necessity of arraying themselves in tossed artificial flowers, ribbons thac have lost their smoothless, rumpled feathers, and dresses of fashionable make, worn out and draggled; for the national custom of a habit peculiar to each class or province affords them a refuge,

and supplies them with the means of avoiding a squalid appearance. Although these remarks apply much less to our Colonial cities, still it would be a "boon everywhere could a costume be invented that would look well in all materials, which the wealthy might have made)of silk or velvet, and the less fortunate in worldly circumstances construct of more homely fabrics, as it was in the Highlands of Scotland, for instance, at the time when, as Sir Walter Scott tells us, a chieftain's daughter was distinguished by her plaid of silk and satin snood. Such an invention would be a boon, and it would have the effect of bereaving the lords of creation of their vantage ground and opportunity of sneering at the caprices of the weaker vessels — at least, so far as personal adornment is concerned. Senex.