Or dimly stir to answer at my feet
The sorrow of the sea.
[ANECDOTES OF FASHION.]
By I. D’ISRAELI.
The origin of many fashions was in the endeavor to conceal some deformity of the inventor; hence the cushions, ruffs, hoops, and other monstrous devices. If a reigning beauty chanced to have an unequal hip, those who had very handsome hips would load them with that false rump which the other was compelled by the unkindness of nature to substitute. Patches were invented in England in the reign of Edward VI by a foreign lady, who in this manner ingeniously covered a wen on her neck. Full-bottomed wigs were invented by a French barber, one Duviller, whose name they perpetuated, for the purpose of concealing an elevation in the shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VII of France introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs. Shoes with very long points, full two feet in length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large excrescence on one of his feet. When Francis I was obliged to wear his hair short, owing to a wound he received in the head, it became a prevailing fashion at court. Others, on the contrary, adapted fashions to set off their peculiar beauties; as Isabella of Bavaria, remarkable for her gallantry, and the fairness of her complexion, introduced the fashion of leaving the shoulders and part of the neck uncovered.
Fashions have frequently originated from circumstances as silly as the following one. Isabella, daughter of Philip II, and wife of the Archduke Albert, vowed not to change her linen till Ostend was taken; this siege, unluckily for her comfort, lasted three years; and the supposed color of the archduchess’s linen gave rise to a fashionable color, hence called l’Isabeau, or the Isabella; a kind of whitish-yellow-dingy. Sometimes they originate in some temporary event: as after the battle of Steenkirk, where the allies wore large cravats, by which the French frequently seized hold of them, a circumstance perpetuated on the medals of Louis XIV, cravats were called Steenkirks; and after the battle of Ramillies, wigs received that denomination.