This is John Jones, who has kindly selected Mrs. de Cotillon's Thé Dansant, to display his idea of what the alterations in evening dress (said to be meditated by a certain R-y-l P-rs-n-ge) ought to be.
Masculine Dress
Throughout the period dealt with in the previous volume man, in Punch, was the predominant partner in the domain of dress. From 1857 onwards the balance is handsomely redressed in favour of the women. And as Punch was staffed by men, we may fairly attribute this change to the standardizing of male attire which dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. The difference between the dress of men to-day and in 1860 is immensely less than that between the dress of women at the same two dates. Beaver hats were still worn in 1858; they are even now exhibited in the shop front of a well-known hatter's in St. James's Street; but the silk chimney pot had already come to stay. The evening dress suit was indistinguishable from that now worn. There was not much difference in the cut of morning coats. Only in the "nether integuments" is the flux of fashion really marked. "Peg-top" trousers were in vogue in 1858 and for a few years subsequently, and Punch attributes their shape to mimicry of the crinoline, though in one passage he professes to derive it from the contours of the Cochin China fowl. The "Peg-top," however, did not last. It was otherwise with the introduction of knickerbockers, so-called from the resemblance to the knee-breeches of the Dutchmen in Cruickshank's illustrations to Washington Irving's History of New York.
HARRY TAKES HIS COUSINS TO SEE THE HOUNDS MEET
Enter Mamma and Aunt Ellen.
Mamma (to old woman): "Pray, have you met two ladies and a gentleman?"
Old Woman: "Well, I met three people—but, la! there, I can't tell ladies from gentlemen nowadays—when I was a gal, etc., etc."
In a letter to The Times in May, 1859, Lord Elcho recommends "nickerbockers"—so he spells the word—as a substitute for trousers for volunteers. Charles Kingsley in the same year derived them from country-made—and badly made—puffed trunk-hose. But their utility and convenience for country wear and sport were soon established, though the dreadful abbreviation "Knickers" did not come into use for some twenty years. The shortening of ladies' dresses and the bagginess of men's knickerbockers afforded Punch some excuse for professing to be unable to distinguish the sexes at a distance, but the actual assumption of knickerbockers by women belonged to a later generation.