Who knows but that our own Mexican war may exert an influence on dress, and that some day the Ranchero’s striped blanket and broad-brimmed hat may become the fashion. Men will stalk about the streets in boots of cow-hide, and instead of hunting with dogs and rifles, the lazo or lariette will be adopted universally. All the world knows that immediately after the return of the army of the Duke of Wellington to England, from Waterloo, the military black stock was adopted, and it may be that the green pantaloons with the brown stripe, now worn, are an imitation of the dress of the Mexican veterans who were defeated at Cherebusco. The same may be said of the cloth caps, with the covers of oil-skin, now so much in vogue. It may be remarked that this article of dress has always followed the tenue of the army, the flat cap replacing the hussar’s, as the latter did the old gig-top leather apparatus.
Other nations of Europe did not participate in the French Revolution, but became imitators of the costumes it created. We have now come to the period of the Directory, which exerted its influence on costume, or rather the influence of which was reflected by the costume of the day.
The Directory and Consulate saw all France seized with fury for the antique. These were the days of the Romaines and Atheniennes, when David was toiling with the pencil to effect a reform of costume, and when Talma sought to introduce correct ideas of dress on the stage. The men of Paris still adhered to the English costume, which, fortified by their fiat, became that of the world. They compromised their English predilections, however, so far as to wear their hair à la Titus or à la Caracalla, what that was may be seen from the following engraving.
They seemed, however, to struggle to make this costume as unbecoming as possible, wearing the coats loose, the collars immense, the breasts small, and such pantaloons and shocking bad hats as were never seen before or since. The costume of a dandy of 1798 consisted of a blue coat, a white waistcoat, open in the breast, a finely worked shirt-bosom, fastened with a diamond pin, a huge muslin cravat, Nankin pantaloons, with black stripes down the seams, and thrust into the boots. (In society the boot was replaced by a small and pointed shoe.) The everlasting bludgeon was as indispensable in the street as the boots and the hat. To young Thelusson, when thus dressed and armed, Madame de Stael, who wore an oriental toilette, said, “Citizen, you bear the sceptre of ridicule.” “Madame,” replied he, “you are certainly competent to award it to whom you please.” Never were there so many strange costumes seen in any one city as in Paris at that time, when peruques, powder, hair à la Titus, cocked and round hats all were mingled together. Costume was indeed republican if the government was despotic.
[Conclusion in our next.
THE BEAUTIFUL OF EARTH.
All Nature’s beauteous forms, of light, of earth, or air, or sky,