A fashion if started is a demon or a god let loose. As we have said, there is an interesting point to be observed in looking at woman as decoration; whether the medium be fresco, bas relief, sculpture, mosaic, stained glass or painting, the decorative line, shown in costumes, presents the same recurrent types that we found when studying the history of furniture.
For our present purposes it is expedient to confine ourselves to the observation of that expression of civilisation which had root, so far as we know, in Assyria and Egypt, and spread like a branching vine through Byzantium, Greece, Rome, Gothic Europe and Europe of the Renaissance, on through the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, down to the present time.
Costumes for woman and man are supposed to have had their origin in a cord tied about the waist, from which was suspended crude implements (used for the slaying of beasts for food, and in self-defence); trophies of war, such as teeth, scalps, etc. The trophies suspended, partly concealed the body and were for decoration, as was tattooing of the skin. Clothes were not the result of modesty; modesty followed the partial covering of the human body. Modesty, or shame, was the emotion which developed when man, accustomed to decoration—trophies or tattooing—was deprived of all or part of such covering. What parts of the body require concealment, is purely a matter of the customs prevailing with a race or tribe, at a certain time, and under certain conditions.
PLATE XVIII
Mrs. Langtry (Lady de Bathe) who has been one of the greatest beauties of modern times and a marked example of a woman who has always understood her own type, to costume it.
She agrees that this photograph of her, in an evening wrap, illustrates a point she has always laid emphasis on: that a garment which has good lines—in which one is a picture—continues wearable even when not the dernier cri of fashion.
This wrap was worn by Mrs. Langtry about two years ago.
This is a theme, the detailed development of which lies outside the purpose of our book. It has delightful possibilities, however, if the plentiful data on the subject, given in scientific books, were to be condensed and simplified.