Her Royal Highness Woman

by Max O'Rell

Never in the history of female attire have women dressed so exquisitely as they do in this year of grace 1901. The figure is gracefully accentuated; all the sculptural lines are discreetly indicated without any exaggeration. No more bustle, no more outrageous sleeves, no more deformities of any sort. Many a woman would have been in despair if Nature had made her as fashion has often made her appear.

To-day it is the female form divine, beautifully draped in beautiful limp materials of soft, delicate hues, gracefully relieved by lovely lace and refined trimmings, the whole with a touch of simplicity that never fails to enhance the beauty of the wearer. No, never since the classical days of Athenian dress have women looked so beautiful as they do now.

The majority of us men are, I believe, conceited enough to think that women dress and try to look as beautiful as possible to please us. My firm conviction is that women dress to please themselves—or to kill other women with envy. To the question, Do women dress to please men? I answer most emphatically, No, they do not. Quite the contrary.

And now, may I be permitted to remark that when I reflect that Eve, after eating an apple, discovered that she was naked, I cannot help thinking that a little bite at that fruit might be of service to many ladies before they leave their dressing-rooms to go to a ball, a theatre, or a dinner party? Is it that the fashion of the day requires the train to be so long that there remains no material to make a corsage with? From the way in which women dress in the evening, you might almost mistake them for Eve.

The fact is that it is practically impossible for you to say what it is that the women wear around a dinner-table. Women dress for breakfast and undress for dinner. As for the sight offered to our gaze from the boxes at the opera, we might as well be in a Turkish bath. And the most amusing and edifying part of it is that this fashion is more flourishing in puritanical England than in any country I know, and that most of those beautiful daughters of Albion whom you see so much of are the very same ones who are presidents, vice-presidents and secretaries of the societies for the suppression of the nude in the public parks, the museums and art-galleries and other British institutions for the suggestion of indecency.

Who says that the world is sad?

'Society ought to be exposed,' I once remarked to a beautiful member of the English aristocracy, 'for giving that bad example.' 'You are quite right,' she said; 'but that will do no good, because I believe that there is nothing that English society enjoys more than being exposed.' 'Evidently!' I thought, as I looked at the glorious shoulders exposed to my gaze.

I was quite right when I once exclaimed: 'Provided an English woman does not show her feet, she is safe and feels comfortable.'

In the way of dressing, of all the women of Europe and America, the Germans are the worst, the French the best, and the Americans the smartest. The German women are covered, the English clothed, the Americans arrayed, and the French dressed. I am not now speaking of high life—these people are the same all the world over; and whenever a writer publishes a criticism on the life and manners of any nation he ought to place the following epigraph at the top of every page he writes, so that the reader may not lose sight of it: 'All civilized nations in the world are alike in one respect: they are composed of two kinds of people—those that are ladies and gentlemen, and those that are not.' Then there could be no misunderstanding about what he writes.

I think it is acknowledged that the French women are the best dressed women in the world, and that French dressmakers are the authority on what should be worn and how it should be worn. Next I should say decidedly the American woman. In the United States the latest French fashions are worn in all their freshness and glory, but too often with exaggeration. And, when the French fashions are already outrageous in their extravagance of style and size, then the Lord help the American women! I shall never forget the remark that that most delightful of men and writers, Oliver Wendell Holmes, made to me some years ago, as we were talking on the subject of women's dress: 'By the time a French milliner has been six months in New York she will make you a bonnet to frighten a Choctaw Indian.' But then, Dr. Holmes was a refined Bostonian.