MASCULINE FASHIONS
In his emancipation from Fashion man has made much more progress than woman. There is still a considerable number of shallow-brained young “society men” who naïvely and minutely accept the slight variations introduced every year in the cut and style of cravats, shirts, and evening-dress by cunning tailors, in order to compel men to throw away last season’s suits and order new ones. But much larger is the number of men who disregard such innovations, and laugh at the silly persons who meekly accept them, even when their taste is offended by such new fashions as the hideous collars and hats with which the market is occasionally flooded.
There was a time when men spent as much time and money on dress in a week as they now do in a year; a time when men were as strictly ruled by capricious, cunning Fashion as women are to-day. Lord March, we read, “laid a wager that he would make fashionable the most humiliating dress he could think of. Accordingly, he wore a blue coat with crimson collar and cuffs—a livery, and not a tasteful livery—but he won his bet.” After the battle of Agincourt, it is said, “the Duc de Bourbon, in order to ransom King John, sold his overcoat to a London Jew, who gave no more than its value, we may be pretty sure, but nevertheless gave 5200 crowns of gold for it. It seems to have been a mass of the most precious gems.” The Duke of Buckingham “had twenty-seven suits of clothes made, the richest that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, silver, gold, and gems could contribute; one of which was a white uncut velvet, set all over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at fourscore thousand pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat, and spurs.”
Mr. Spencer cites two amusing instances of masculine subjection to fashion in Africa and mediæval Europe. Among the Darfurs in Africa, “If the sultan, being on horseback, happens to fall off, all his followers must fall off likewise; and should any one omit this formality, however great he may be, he is laid down and beaten.” “In 1461, Duke Philip of Burgundy, having had his hair cut during an illness, issued an edict that all the nobles of his states should be shorn also. More than five hundred persons sacrificed their hair.”
So far as men are still subject to the influence of ugly fashions, they differ from women in at least frankly acknowledging the ugliness of these fashions. Whereas most women admire, or pretend to admire, corsets, high-heeled boots, crinolettes, bustles, etc., there are few men who do not detest e.g. the unshapely, baggy trousers, which were so greatly abhorred by the æsthetic sense of the ancient Greeks; and most men to-day (except those who have ugly legs) would gladly wear knee-breeches, if they could do so without making themselves too conspicuous. Herein lies the greatest impediment to dress reform. To make oneself very conspicuous is justly considered a breach of good manners; and few have the courage, like Mr. Oscar Wilde, to make martyrs and butts of ridicule of themselves.
But if individuals are comparatively powerless, clubs of acknowledged standing might make themselves very useful to the cause of Personal Beauty, as affected by dress, if they would vote to adopt in a body certain reforms as regards trousers, hats, and evening-dress. Then it would no longer be said of a man rationally dressed that he is eccentric, but that he belongs to the X—— Club; and many outsiders would immediately follow suit for the coveted distinction of being taken for members of that club. Thus both the wise and the foolish would be gratified.
As showing how invariably and consistently Fashion is the handmaid of ugliness, it is curious to note that the several styles of dress worn by men are fashionable in proportion to their ugliness. For the greatest occasions the swallow-tail or evening-dress is prescribed. Next in rank is the ugly frock-coat, for morning calls. Of late, it is true, the more becoming “cut-away” has been tolerated in place of the frock-coat; but the sack-coat, which alone follows the natural outlines of the body, and neither has a caudal appendage, like the evening-dress, nor, like the frock-coat, gives the impression that a man’s waist extends down to his knees, is altogether tabooed at social gatherings, except those of the most informal kind.
Man’s evening-dress is so uniquely unæsthetic and ugly that fashionable women have of course long been eyeing it with envy and have gradually adopted some of its features. One of these is the chimney-pot hat, the cause of so much premature baldness and discomfort. But women are not quite so foolish as men in this matter; for they do not wear tall hats at evening-parties and the opera, but only when out riding, where the necessity of dodging about to keep them on against the force of the wind and the blows of overhanging boughs, compels them to go through all sorts of grotesque gymnastics with neck and head. If they wore a more rational and becoming head-dress on horseback they might easily look pretty and graceful, which would be fatal to their chances of being considered fashionable.[fashionable.]
In comparing masculine and feminine fashions, we must note that trousers and swallow-tailed coats, though ugly, are harmless; while high-heeled shoes, corsets, chignons, etc., are as fatal to health as to Personal Beauty.
It is sometimes claimed in behalf of Fashion that, though it often favours ugliness, it establishes a rule and model for all; whereas, if everything were left to individual taste, the result might be still more disastrous. Nonsense. Rare as good taste is among women, a modicum is commonly present; and there are extremely few who, if not overawed by the Fashion Fetish, would ever invent or adopt such hideous irrepressible monstrosities as bustles, crinolines, chignons, trailing dresses, Chinese boots, bird-corpse hats, etc.
A protest must, finally, be made against the horrible figures which in our fashion papers are constantly offered as models of style and appearance. Even in the best of them, such as Harper’s Bazar, which frequently points out the injuriousness of tight lacing, female figures are printed every week with hideously narrow waists, such as no woman could possibly possess unless she were in the last stages of consumption, or some other wasting disease.