It is you who have the honour of setting the fashion to the civilized world. You wear your clothes so gracefully, and you are so charming, that even a frying-pan would look pretty on your heads. But I object to your hats and bonnets. Yes, those tyroliens, loaded with feathers, aigrettes, pompons, birds, fruit, and what not, are very dear and exceedingly ugly. You seek too much to attract to your hats that attention which should be bestowed entirely on your matchless eyes.
The wife of a clerk in Paris with about a hundred and fifty pounds a-year, will tell you that it is impossible to get a decent bonnet for less than forty or fifty francs. What folly! I know perfect ladies in England, who, for about five or ten shillings, make their own, and charming bonnets they are: simple, quiet, and most stylish. In England, only dealers in cast-off clothing would think of getting themselves up in those gigantic constructions, covered with currants, cherries—when shall we have the pumpkin?—that I noticed in the windows of the grand bonnet shops in Paris.
Come, mesdames, turn over a new leaf. Let me recommend you, for instance, the little “Princess” bonnet, so called because of the partiality shown for it by the Princess of Wales. It is a simple little form, made of straw, framed in velvet, that is not perched on the top of the head, but encases it, just leaving a small chignon visible at the back. How pretty women look in it! I would recommend also the Peg Woffington hat, which completely frames the face. Every picture needs a frame to throw up its beauty, as even a child in art knows. How else explain why the nun’s head-dress, the hood, the turban, and the mantilla are so becoming to all young women?
Try these coiffures, ladies, and I assure you that you will find them charming. Real distinction consists in simplicity, as you know very well, and you are quite pretty enough to be able to do without those absurd piles of head gear, that do not suit you at all, and that must seriously interfere with your husbands’ peace of mind. Do not wait until your milliners introduce the reform. It is to their interest to persuade you that the more furbelows you put on, the prettier you look. Take the matter into your own hands: put on a little Princess bonnet next Easter, and all the nymphs of the Bois de Boulogne will drive to their milliners, and order one of the same pattern, on their way home from the Avenue des Acacias.
Englishwomen wear their hair very simply dressed, even at balls. I admire that. To my taste, those locks, a little curly and rough on the top of the head, and coiled into a knot at the back of the neck, are much prettier than the complicated monuments that are the production of some fashionable hairdresser’s brain, and need a hundred hair pins to keep them together. These edifices that have taken hours to build, seem to awaken no idea in the mind, unless it be the idea of the length of time it would take to undo them, and the danger of touching them, lest the symmetry should be spoiled. On the contrary, those loosely twisted knots suggest a thousand charming ideas to the mind. Everything about a woman should be suggestive. You fancy you are going to see two pretty round arms uplifted to fasten the swaying tresses. And that is the prettiest movement of a woman, much the prettiest, you will admit. Besides this, the unfastening is but the work of an instant, and “o’er a neck’s rose-misted marble” flows a mantle of gold or ebony. Yes, decidedly the English way of doing the hair suggests many pretty thoughts.
Love feeds on suggestion: I had almost said on illusion. The greatest charm about a woman’s dress lies less in what it displays than in what it only hints at. As an illustration, take the success of a dress that was a great favourite in England two years ago. It was fastened at the neck; but, lower down, it yawned open, as if burst through the pressure of abondance de biens, showing little, but leaving much to be guessed at. It was provoking and exceedingly piquant. Besides—let us say here all we think—this kind of bodice allowed a little cheating, and the dissimulation of a small salt-cellar here and there, which naturally made it very popular in England.
It is all very well for the fair sex to tell us that it is out of pure vanity they delight in dressing prettily. I do not believe a word of it. I should not dare to affirm that they did not take a secret delight in eclipsing or crushing a rival, but I am infatuated enough to believe that it is principally to please us that they study to look lovely. It seems to me then, that we ought to have a voice in the matter, a consultative if not a deliberative voice, and to be allowed to tell them the kind of attire that pleases us most.
The more so, fair ladies, that it is one of our privileges to pay the milliner’s bills.
Just as glaring and showy as are the colours the lower class women array themselves in, just so quiet and simple are those worn in the street by ladies.
The dresses you see in the carriages, in Hyde Park, are noticeable for their sober tints and a studied, almost Puritan, simplicity.