DRESS.
IN the matter of dress variety is to the civilised woman what finery is to the savage. The more civilised women become, the more variety they must have. Things have come to such a pass now that the daily papers must tell the news of the fashions ; the gravest journal dare not ignore them. Side by side with the affairs of the realm and the annals of Court and of crime stand the kaleidoscopic details of coloured stuffs and fantastic styles which delight the feminine public. This feminine weakness about which the moralists talk is in reality a great feminine strength whereby women throw into certain directions the whole weight of their clothes. Skirts change from long to short, folds from ample to skimpy, colours from bright to dim. But these are only, as it were, the "headings " of change. Innumerable subtleties of detail confound the student, and the whole object of the dress- designer is to render unwearable what is not yet worn out, while the object of the woman of fashion is to break the record, to he the first to spring a surprise.
Time was when women were content with traditional ornaments, and in the East they are content still ; and in parts of Europe too the lower people remain conservatives in the matter of clothes. In new countries, however, no such thing as a class costume was ever heard of, and the tendency among all the advancing nations is towards (if the expression may be permitted) a uniform variety,—i.e., the object of the women who can afford it is change, and their poorer sisters follow afar off. Even sentiment now is powerless to check the passion. Hereditary jewels are set and reset. In their glitter alone is tradition preserved. The eternal stones must Took as new as possible. In the same manner, where tradition and value count for less the gift of love is exchanged for the ornament of the hour. Meanwhile everything is imitated. The factory girl wears pearl beads when pearls are the fashion, and exchanges them for glass when the day of translucent stones arrives. She wears feathers when feathers are worn, if she has to hire them; and no consideration of convenience or weather modifies the cat or the substance of her workaday clothes. The chief difference between her and the lady of fashion is that she wears her ever-changing finery upon unsuitable occasions, no doubt because her laborious life provides an insufficient number of suitable occasions upon which she can show it off.
While of course the fine lady and the factory girl may be accounted the true maids of honour of the goddess of Fashion, the only people to whom her service is a constant aim and an unbroken undercurrent of thought, few among the sensible many of all classes can be said to be outside the circle of her court. Take the evidence of the train, that place in which all classes meet bent upon their several avocations. Nearly all the women who travel perpetually in and out of the cities belong to the great moral division of the consciously responsible. Socially they come from every- where. What an immense item is dress in their conversa- tion ! This does not in the least inean that they are frivolous people. We can see and know by their faces and demeanour that the vast majority of them are not frivolous. It only means that they enjoy thinking about dress, and that when they have time they do so. Even those who make it a rule not to speak of clothes think of them; and a woman who is indifferent to her daughter's dress from the time of her birth onward has as a rule no very deep affection for her daughter, just as a man who cannot force an interest in his son's sports is not in complete sympathy with his son. They are selfish women and out of touch with their sex for whom the question of clothes is non-existent. Vast numbers of women, the greater part of whose day is fully occupied with more important matters, think about dress at odd moments, as men pick up a light magazine or smoke a cigarette. The modern desire of the sensible for suitability in dress is one manifesta- tion of the new wish for variety. Miss Austen's ladies, to speak of yesterday, and all the ladies to whom the painters of the farther past have introduced us, apparently looked very much the same indoors and out, morning and evening, summer and winter. Now we hardly know at a dinner-party the woman we met during a country walk. Her income may permit her few new clothes, but it must be small indeed if it does not permit two or three complete metamorphoses. There are of course a few women who hate the fashions. They tell those who will listen to them that dress should express the mind, and some of them say the souL A due regard for logic shows them that the soul does not change with the occupations of the body, and they always look much the same. On the other hand, it is ludicrous to say that their eccentric garments give a clue to their individuality. It is difficult, if one thinks seriously about the matter, to imagine how this could be accomplished. In what colour and what form does a warm heart find expression, or a quick intelligence, or a talent for organisation, or a taste for literature ? All these may be suggested by a want of self-consciousness. But the vast majority of the un-self-conscious keep " the good common way," which means that they follow the fashion so far as good sense permits.
There is no doubt that as civilisation advances men tend to wear a uniform. All the public schools have adopted it, and the little boys at primary schools look more and more alike. Boys show a great anxiety to be like their fellows, and to be inconspicuous in the matter of clothes. To the unobservant person masculine dress does not change much with the years. Attempts have been made to persuade women to a uniform, but they do not succeed. One at least of the now fashionable girls' schools is adopting a uniform dress, just as the big charity schools are giving it up. It may succeed, but we should doubt it. Attempts to suppress Nature proverbially renew her strength. It is part of the attempt to educate girls like their brothers, and to foster in them the love of games. It is part of a system which, while it suppresses many of the faults to which feminine human nature is prone, seems to leave the mind of woman wonderfully empty. A nurse's dress is not exactly a uniform, it is so evidently designed for cleanliness only. As to the hot, historic, and very unhygienic robes of the Roman and Anglican nun, they are intended, among other unnatural regulations, to
take these creatures of religious vocation out of the world. How far such a setting apart of devotees is desirable is a question upon which the Protestant world appears to be changing its mind. If a nun's costume were suddenly to become a passing fashion, it would admittedly be a very pretty, though not very practical, attire. It is its awful sameness in the midst of change which renders it so crushing to the individuality.
The real defence for women in their growing love of dress seems to us to be this, that dress is a recreation, one of those natural recreations which grow out of necessity and out of everlasting emotions. It is nothing against a recrea- tion that the frivolous rich suffer from over-indulgence in it, or the frivolous poor from that craving for it which has its roots in privation. The love of dress among women— especially, we think, in its modern manifestation, which emphasises variety—makes, we believe, for social balance. The disappearance of all remnant of class costume is a. great reform. The open worship of tradition is a deadening thing. At the same time, by cultivating their instinct for the pretty and the useless, women build unconsciously a great rampart of admiration against the devastating spirits of envy and utilitarianism. Dress is a recreation shared by a whole sex,—a strong bond of sympathy, and at the same time one of the forces which render the little ebullition , of unnatural feeling which we have dignified by the name of sex-hatred wholly ridiculous. For if we go to the root of the matter, the reason women love to wear a variety of fine clothes is because men love to see them wearing them, and the reason men tend more and more to a uniform is because women in their heart of hearts care less than men do for appearances, are less influenced by them, and have a quicker appreciation of those charms over which fashion and finery have no effect.
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