Woman as Decoration

by Emily Burbank

The collecting of materials and all accessories to a costume, puts one in touch, not only with the dress, but the life of the period, and the customs of the times. Once steeped in the tradition of Spanish art and artists, how quick the connoisseur is to recognize Spanish influence on the art of Holland, France and England. Lead your expert in costumes of nations into talking of history and we promise you pictures of dynasties and lands that few historical writers can match. This man or woman has extracted from the things people wore the story of where they wore them, and when, and how; for the lover of colour we commend this method of studying history.

If any one of our readers is casting about for a hobby and craves one with inexhaustible possibilities, we would advise: try collecting data on periods in dress, as shown in the art treasures of the world, for of this there is verily no end.

We warn the novice in advance that each detail of woman's dress has for one in pursuit of such data the allure of the siren.

There is the pictured story of head-dresses and hats, and how the hair is worn, from Cleopatra's time till ours; the evolution of a woman's sleeve, its ups and downs and ins and outs as shown in art; the separation of the waist from skirt, and ever changing line of both; the neck of woman's gown so variously cut and trimmed and how the necklace changed likewise to accord; the passing of the sandals of the Greeks into the poetic glove-fitting slippers of to-day.

One sets out gaily to study costumes, full of the courage of ignorance, the joyous optimism of an enthusiast, because it is amusing and looks so simple with all the material,—old and new, lying about one.

Ah, that is the pitfall—the very abundance of those plates in wondrous books, old coloured prints and portraits of the past. To some students this kaleidoscopic vision of period costumes never falls into definite lines and colour; or if the types are clear, what they come from or merge into remains obscure.

For the eager beginner we have tried to evolve out of the whole mass of data a system of origin and development as definite as the anatomy of the human body, a framework on which to build. If our historical outline be clear enough to impress the mental vision as indelibly as those primary maps of the earth did, then we feel persuaded, the textless books of wonderful and beguiling costume plates will serve their end as never before. We humbly offer what we hope may prove a key to the rich storehouse.

Simplicity, and pure line, were lost sight of when overabundance dulled the senses of the world. We could prove this, for art shows that the costuming of woman developed slowly, preserving, as did furniture, the same classic lines and general characteristics until the fifteenth century, the end of the Middle Ages.

With the opening up of trade channels and the possibilities of easy and quick communication between countries we find, as we did in the case of furniture, periods of fashion developing without nationality. Nations declared themselves in the artistry of workmanship, as to-day, and in the modification and exaggeration of an essential detail, resulting from national or individual temperament.

If you ask, "Where do fashions come from,—why 'periods'?" we would answer that in the last analysis one would probably find in the conception of every fashion some artist's brain. If the period is a good one, then it proves that fate allowed the artist to be true to his muse. If the fashion is a bad one the artist may have had to adapt his lines and colour or detail to hide a royal deformity, or to cater to the whim of some wilful beauty ignorant of our art, but rich and in the public eye.