Men and women must yet learn to dress so as to move and breathe freely and naturally before they reach the point where fashion will stand still—having folds that fall simply, short for action, long for show. Woman must appear yet before us as she should do, supple and free. The world must yet wake up to the truth and purity of beauty, and to do so must come back to its Creator—delicacy weighed in the scales with the virtues of nature; the beauty of strength admired, before the whiteness and softness of the drooping flower.
We must love all that is beautiful. The naked form of a woman is beautiful, but the folds of a loosely-fitting, simply plain costume are also beautiful, and perhaps the whiteness and softness gained, if it can be gained without loss of strength, by shading it from the sun, is a point gained; for it is lovely in its fragility—a loveliness which the air of heaven would roughen, which the eye of day would cover as thoroughly as a veil—subtle gradations which are never seen except by the painter.
Cover it, if you will, with soft folds that will fit to the motions, not with the snaky outer skin which reveals the shape completely, but without a touch of the multitude of colour charms. We can never return to the innocence of Eden until we fling off the clay portion of us, and look upon life with spiritual eyes. Then the ugliness of sin and crime will make us droop our eyes, but never the perfection of nature.
I have seen people turn with blushing faces at the sight of a naked child, as if it was something to be guilty about. Education had debased their minds. In the South Seas I have watched the sexes together plunge into the coral-washed waves, and discourse on passing events ashore, and they had no thought of shame. Nature had left them where education will bring us all, if the time ever comes when knowledge can be surmounted.
Choose, while you must dress, each a fashion to suit yourselves. Begin with the figure which your Maker has given you, and assimilate as nearly as your material will permit your fashion to that figure. Consult the hygiene of that form, and make your fashion subordinate to those laws. Perfect health and perfect grace go together. Consult the colour which nature has given to you, and place the colour of your costume in harmony with that, to keep that colour, when dressed, exactly in the same position as it is when you are nude; for depend upon it, if you are in health, no heightening or lowering will ever become you so well.
Remember that fashionable colours may have suited the particular woman who made the fashion; seldom anyone else.
Think you are as good a woman as any other, and bring pride to the rescue. You have equal right, through the royalty of your perfect womanhood, to make a fashion as any duchess or demi-mondaine in the land.
Banish false hair, which only heats your brains and wears away your own hair, besides carrying dead impressions and nameless diseases into your system.
Banish hats that hide or kill faces, or weigh down heads. A light cover for the sun, if fierce: yet the hair was given to man for this purpose.
Banish stays, which murder not only yourselves, but the races coming after you.