By 1904 skirts were beginning to be appreciably shortened, but, as a set-off, fashionable women indemnified themselves by the length and expansiveness of their sleeves:—
Her sleeves are made in open bags
Like trousers in the Navy;
No more she sweeps the streets, but drags
Her sleeves across the gravy.
Elaborate bathing dresses, exhibiting a gradual tendency to reduce the amount of material, are henceforth a frequent subject of illustration. In 1905 Punch's fair bathers remain on the shore and never enter the water as it would absolutely spoil their dresses. We hear less of the matinée hat, but the enormous coiffures depicted in 1907 proved hardly less objectionable to those who sat behind them; and as for hats, the more grotesque and absurd they were the stronger was their appeal. The new hats in 1907, with the brim large at the back, have a sort of sou'-wester effect; and the towering monstrosities depicted at the close of the year make "busbys" look small: Mars is eclipsed by Venus. In 1908 Punch chronicles the advent of the latest importation from France, the revived "Directoire" costume as worn at Longchamps:—
Long languid lines unbroken by a frill,
Superfluous festoons reduced to nil,
A figure like a seal reared up on end
And poking forward with a studied bend;