Another perfectly legitimate object of dress is attractiveness, so that by its aid our persons may be set off to the best advantage; dress should also be individual and symbolic, so as to indicate clearly the position and character which we desire to obtain and hold. It is not of men's attire that we have now to speak; that has been settled for them by the tailors' strike, which practically ordained that he that was shabby should be shabby, or even shabbier still, and he that had allowed himself to be thrust into the straitened trousers and scanty coatee of last year should continue to exhibit his proportions long after the grotesqueness of his figure had been recognised even by himself.
But it is of the dress of our women that we are compelled to testify, and it can hardly be denied that at the present moment it offends grievously in three particulars. It is inadequate for decency; it lacks that truthfulness which is, and should be, the base of all that is attractive and beautiful; and in its symbolism it is in the highest degree objectionable, for it not only aims at what is unreal and false, but it simulates that which is positively hateful and meretricious, so that it is difficult now for even a practised eye to distinguish the high-born maiden or matron of Belgravia from the Anonymas who haunt the drive and fill our streets.
This indictment is, it may be said, a severe one; but if we examine, so far as male critics may venture to do, the costume of a fashionable woman of the day, it can hardly be said to be unjust. The apparent object of modern female dress is to assimilate its wearers as nearly as possible in appearance to women of a certain class—the class to which it was formerly hardly practicable to allude, and yet be intelligible to young ladies; but all that is changed, and the habits and customs of the women of the demi-monde are now studied as if they were indeed curious, but exceptionally admirable also, and thus a study unseemly and unprofitable has begotten a spirit of imitation which has achieved a degrading success.
"Our modest matrons meet," not "to stare the strumpet down," but to compare notes, to get hints, and to engage in a kind of friendly rivalry—in short, to pay that homage to Vice, and in a very direct way too, which Vice is said formerly to have paid to Virtue. Paint and powder are of course the first requisites for the end in view, and these adjuncts have to be laid on with such skill as the débutante or her toilette-maid possesses, which is sometimes so small as to leave their handiwork disgustingly coarse and apparent.
There are pearl-powder, violet-powder, rouge, bistre for the eyelids, belladonna for the eyes, whitelead and blacklead, yellow dye and mineral acids for the hair—all tending to the utter destruction of both hair and skin. The effect of this "diaphanous" complexion and "aurified" hair (we borrow the expressions) in a person intended by nature to be dark, or swarthy, is most comical; sometimes the whitelead is used so unsparingly that it has quite a blue tint, which glistens until the face looks more like a death's head anointed with phosphorus and oil for theatrical purposes than the head of a Christian gentlewoman. It may be interesting to know, and we have the information from high, because soi-disant fashionable authority, that the reign of golden locks and blue-white visages is drawing to a close, and that it is to be followed by bronze complexions and blue-black hair—à l'Africaine we presume.
When fashionable Madame has, to her own satisfaction, painted and varnished her face, she then proceeds, like Jezebel, to tire her head, and, whether she has much hair or little, she fixes on to the back of it a huge nest of coarse hair generally well baked in order to free it from the parasites with which it abounded when it first adorned the person of some Russian or North-German peasant girl. Of course this gives an unnaturally large and heavy appearance to the cerebellar region; but nature is not exactly what is aimed at, still less refinement.
If this style be not approved of, there is yet another fashion—namely, to cut the hair short in a crop, créper it, curl it, frizzle it, bleach it, burn it, and otherwise torture it until it has about as much life in it as last year's hay; and then to shampoo it, rumple it, and tousle it, until the effect is to produce the aspect of a madwoman in one of her worst fits. This method, less troublesome and costly than the other, may be considered even more striking, so that it is largely adopted by a number of persons who are rather disreputable, and poor. As is well known, not all of the asinine tribe wear asses' ears; nevertheless some of these votaries of dress find their ears too long, or too large, or ill-placed, or, what comes to the same thing, inconveniently placed, but a prettier or better-shaped pair are easily purchased, admirably moulded in gutta-percha or some other plastic material; they are delicately colored, fitted up with earrings and a spring apparatus, and they are then adjusted on to the head, the despised natural ears being of course carefully hidden from view.
It is long enough since a bonnet meant shelter to the face or protection to the head; that fragment of a bonnet which at present represents the head-gear, and which was some years ago worn on the back of the head and nape of the neck, is now poised on the front, and ornamented with birds, portions of beasts, reptiles, and insects. We have seen a bonnet composed of a rose and a couple of feathers, another of two or three butterflies or as many beads and a bit of lace, and a third represented by five green leaves joined at the stalks. A white or spotted veil is thrown over the visage, in order that the adjuncts that properly belong to the theatre may not be immediately detected in the glare of daylight; and thus, with diaphanous tinted face, large painted eyes, and stereotyped smile, the lady goes forth looking much more as if she had stepped out of the green room of a theatre, or from a Haymarket saloon, than from an English home.
But it is in evening costume that our women have reached the minimum of dress and the maximum of brass. We remember a venerable old lady whose ideas of decorum were such that in her speech all above the foot was ankle, and all below the chin was chest; but now the female bosom is less the subject of a revelation than the feature of an exposition, and charms that were once reserved are now made the common property of every looker on. A costume which has been described as consisting of a smock, a waistband, and a frill seems to exceed the bounds of honest liberality, and resembles most perhaps the attire mentioned by Rabelais, "nothing before and nothing behind, with sleeves of the same." Not very long ago two gentlemen were standing together at the Opera. "Did you ever see anything like that?" inquired one, with a significant glance, directing the eyes of his companion to the uncovered bust of a lady immediately below. "Not since I was weaned," was the suggestive reply. We are not aware whether the speaker was consciously or unconsciously reproducing a well-known archiepiscopal mot.
Though our neighbors are not strait-laced, so far as bathing-costume is concerned, they are less tolerant of the nude than we are in this highly-favored land. There was lately a story in one of the French papers that at a certain ball a lady was requested to leave the room because a chain of wrought gold, suspended from shoulder to shoulder, was the sole protection which it seemed to her well to wear on her bosom. To have made the toilette correspond throughout, the dress should have consisted of a crinoline skirt, which, though not so ornamental, would have been not less admirable and more effective.