Should a young woman, of majestic character, inquire for appropriate apparel, she will find it to correspond with her graver and more dignified mien. Her robes should always be long and flowing, and more ample in their folds than those of her gayer sister. Their substance should also be thicker, and of a soberer color. White is becoming to all characters, and not less so to Juno than to Venus; but when colors are to be worn, I recommend to the lady of majestic deportment, to choose the fuller shades of yellow, purple, crimson, scarlet, black, and gray. The materials of her dress in summer, cambrics, muslins, sarcenets; in winter, satins, velvets, broadcloth, &c. Her ornaments should be embroidery of gold, silver, and precious stones, with fillets and diadems of jewels, and waving plumes.
The materials for the winter dresses of majestic forms, and lightly-graceful ones, may be of nearly similar texture, only differing, when made up, in amplitude and abundance of drapery. Satin, Genoa velvet, Indian silks, and kerseymere, may all be fashioned into as becoming an apparel for the slender figure as for the more embonpoint; and the warmth they afford is highly needful to preserve health during the cold and damps of winter. When it is so universally acknowledged, the indispensable necessity of keeping the body in a just temperature between heat and cold, I cannot but be astonished at the little attention that is paid to so momentous a subject by the people of this climate. I wonder that a sense of personal comfort, aided by the well-founded conviction that health is the only preservative of beauty, and lengthener of youth, that it does not impel women to prefer utility before the absurd whims of an unreasonable fashion.
To wear gossamer dresses, with bare necks and naked arms, in a hard frost, has been the mode in this country, and unless a principle is made against it, may be so again, to the utter wretchedness of them, who, so arraying their youth, lay themselves open to the untimely ravages of rheumatisms, palsies, consumptions, and death.
While fine taste, as well as fashion, decrees that the beautiful outline of a well-proportioned form shall be seen in the contour of a nicely-adapted dress, the divisions of that dress must be few and simple. But, though the hoop and quilted petticoat are no longer suffered to shroud in hideous obscurity one of the loveliest works in nature, yet all intermediate covering is not to be banished. Modesty, on one hand, and Health, on the other, still maintain the law of “fold on fold.”
Some of our fair dames appear, summer and winter, with no other shelter from sun or frost, than one single garment of muslin or silk over their chemise—if they wear one! but that is often dubious. The indelicacy of this mode need not be pointed out; and yet, O shame! it is most generally followed. However, common as the crime is, (for who will say that it is not a sin against modesty?) it is quickly visited with its punishment. It loses its aim, if it hopes to attract the admiration of manly worth. No eye but that of a libertine can look upon so wanton a figure with any other sensations than those of disgust and contempt: and the end of all her arts being lost, the certainty of an early old age, chronic pains, and deeply-furrowed wrinkles, is thus incurred in vain.
No woman, even in the warmest flush of youth, ought to be prodigal of her charms; she should not “unmask her beauties to the moon;” or unduly expose the vital fluid, which animates her frame with life and joy. A momentary blast from the east may pierce her filmy robes, wither her bloom, and lay her low.
The Chemise (now too frequently banished) ought to be held as sacred by the modest fair as the vestal veil. No fashion should be able to strip her of that decent covering; in short, woman should consider it as the sign of her delicacy, as the pledge of honor to shelter her from the gaze of unhallowed eyes.
This indispensable vesture being once more appropriated to its ancient use, we shall next speak of the stays, or corsets. They must be light and flexible, yielding to the shape, while they support it. In warm weather, my fair reader should wear under her gown and slip a light cotton petticoat; these few habiliments are sufficient to impart the softening line of modesty to the defined outline of the form. Health, also, is preserved by their opposing the immediate influence of the atmosphere; and none will deny, that enough of female charms are thus displayed, to gratify the quick, discerning eye of taste.
During the chilling airs of spring and autumn, the cotton petticoat should give place to fine flannel; and in the rigid season of winter, another addition must be made, by rendering the outer garments warmer in their original texture: for instance, substituting satins, velvets, and rich stuffs, for the lighter materials of summer. And besides these, the use of fur is not only a salutary, but a magnificent and graceful appendage to dress.
Having laid it down as a general principle, that the fashion of the raiment must correspond with that of the figure, and that every sort of woman will not look equally well in the same style of apparel, it will not be difficult to make you understand, that a handsome person may make a freer use of fancy in her ornaments than an ordinary one. Beauty gives effect to all things; it is the universal embellisher, the setting which makes common crystal shine as diamonds. In short, fashion does not adorn beauty, but beauty fashion. Hence, I must warn Delia, that if she be not cast in so perfect a mould as Celia, she must not flatter herself that she can supply the deficiency by gayer or more sumptuous attire. Whims in dress may possibly pass with her, who, “in Parsian mode, or Indian guise, is still the fairest fair!” But caprices of this sort, in a plain woman, only render her defects more conspicuous; and she, who might have been regarded as a very pleasing girl, in an unobtrusive robe of simple elegance, is ridiculed and despised when descried in the inappropriate plumage of fancy and decoration.