THE MADNESS OF CLOTHES
To dress well is a social duty. Every educated self-respecting woman is bound to clothe her person as neatly, as tastefully and becomingly as she can. But just as a virtue when carried to excess develops into a vice, so the art of dressing well, when allowed to overstep its legitimate uses and expenditure, easily runs into folly and madness. The reckless extravagance of women’s dress at the present day is little short of criminal insanity. A feverish desire to outvie one another in the manner and make of their garments appears to possess every feminine creature whose lot in life places her outside positive penury. The inordinately wealthy, the normally rich, the well-to-do middle class and the shabby genteel are all equally infected by the same hysterical frenzy. And it is a frenzy which is humoured and encouraged on all sides by those who should have the sense, the intelligence and the foresight to realize the danger of such a tendency, and the misery to which in many cases it is surely bound to lead.
Latterly there have been certain growlings and mutterings of discontent from husbands who have had to pay certain unexpectedly long bills for their wives’ “creations in costume”—but, as a matter of fact, it is really the men who are chiefly to blame for the wicked waste of money they afterwards resent and deplore. They are the principal instigators of the mischief,—the aiders and abettors of the destruction of their own credit and good name. For they openly show their admiration for women’s clothes more than for the women clothed,—that is to say, they are more easily captured by art than by nature. No group of male flatterers is ever seen round a woman whose dress is un-stylish or otherwise “out-of-date.” She may have the sweetest face in the world, the purest nature and the truest heart, but the “dressed” woman, the dyed, the artistically “faked” woman will nearly always score a triumph over her so far as masculine appreciation and attention are concerned.
The “faked” woman has everything on her side. The Drama supports her. The Press encourages her. Whole columns in seemingly sane journals are devoted to the description of her attire. Very little space is given to the actual criticism of a new play as a play, but any amount of room is awarded to glorified “gushers” concerning the actresses’ gowns. Of course it has to be borne in mind that the “writing up” of actresses’ gowns serves a double purpose. First, the “creators” of the gowns are advertised, and may in their turn advertise,—which in these days of multitudinous rival newspapers, is a point not to be lost sight of. Secondly, the actresses themselves are advertised and certain gentlemen with big noses who move “behind the scenes,” and are the lineal descendants of Moses and Aaron, may thereby be encouraged to speculate in theatrical “shares.” Whereas criticism of the play itself does no good to anybody nowadays, not even to the dramatic author. For if such criticism be unfavourable, the public say it is written by a spiteful enemy,—if eulogistic, by a “friend at court,” and they accept neither verdict. They go to see the thing for themselves, and if they like it they keep on going. If not, they stay away, and there’s an end.
But to the gowns there is no end. The gowns, even in an un-successful play, are continuously talked of, continuously written about, continuously sketched in every sort of pictorial, small and great, fashionable or merely provincial. And the florid language,—or shall we say the ‘fine writing’?—used to describe clothes generally, on and off the stage, is so ravingly sentimental, so bewilderingly turgid, that it can only compare with the fervid verbosity of the early eighteenth century romancists, or the biting sarcasm of Thackeray’s Book of Snobs, from which the following passage, descriptive of ‘Miss Snobky’s’ presentation gown, may be aptly quoted:—
“Habit de Cour composed of a yellow nankeen illusion dress, over a slip of rich pea-green corduroy, trimmed en tablier with bouquets of Brussels sprouts, the body and sleeves handsomely trimmed with calimanco, and festooned with a pink train and white radishes. Head-dress, carrots and lappets.”
By way of a modern pendant to the above grotesque suggestion, one extract from a lengthy “clothes” article recently published in a daily paper will suffice:
“Among the numerous evening and dinner gowns that the young lady has in her corbeille, one, a l’Impératrice Eugénie, is very lovely. The foundation is of white Liberty, with a tulle overdress on which are four flounces of Chantilly lace arranged in zig-zags, connected together with shaded pink gloria ribbons arranged in waves and wreaths. This is repeated on the low corsage and on the long drooping sleeves of the high bodice.