There is no more vexed “woman’s question” than that of “clothes.” It has been said that if we see how a man regards money and deals with it, we see the whole character of the man; and we think it is equally true that if we find out how a woman or girl feels and acts about clothes, we should have an excellent key to her nature and history.
There is the woman to whom “clothes” are the object of life. This does not necessarily mean that she is a rich woman, who can spend much money, nor does it mean that she succeeds in being a well-dressed woman. She may be one of those who indulge in what the poet Crabbe called “The piteous patchwork of the needy vain,” and who send “one poor robe through fifty fashions”; or she may be a millionaire, always on the alert to catch up the latest fashionable outrage on good taste and good sense. Only in either case, dress is always foremost in her thoughts. The first question she asks about any public event is, “What did the ladies wear?” Her first anxiety concerning any crisis in her own life is, “What shall I put on?” At church she remembers the bonnets and not the text; and the moment she enters an evening party she appraises all the toilets present, and is unhappy unless hers is the most modish and costly, whether it be with the costliness of Worth’s latest whim from the Continent, or of the last box of frippery received at the village shop.
If she feels that any reflection is cast on her waste of time and expenditure of money in the matter of dress, she defends herself in the following manner—that she owes it to society to look nice; that it is everybody’s duty to make the most pleasant appearance; that it is well to employ labour and to put money into circulation, etc., etc. If she has “gone in” for “culture,” perhaps she may quote Browning—
“Be thy beauty
Thy sole duty,” etc.
On the other extreme there is the woman who does not care a bit for dress; who says she wishes we were born covered with black fur, or that we might cut holes in a sack for our feet and arms, and tie it up round our necks! She carries out her words so far as generally to appear in garments specially unsuitable to the occasion on which they are worn, and seems arrayed in remnants and oddments, chosen without any regard to her age, complexion, or circumstances; she thinks getting up a lace fichu is “a waste of time,” and finds it too much “bother” to wear the little ornaments with which family affection may have provided her. She defends herself from any charge of slovenliness by pointing to the swamp of petty frivolity in which too many female lives are sunk, and avers that she scorns any regard which would be influenced by what she wore or did not wear. It may be said in her favour that she generally grows tidier and trimmer as she advances in life, and, proving much more amenable to the criticisms of “her young people” than she was to the raillery of school friends and cousins, is often a matron of comely and attractive appearance.
Then there remains the great multitude between these extremes—a multitude who does not quite know its own mind, and cannot find any principle whereby to regulate its movements; who wants to look pretty and to please, yet is afflicted in its conscience when it reflects on the sin of personal vanity, and on our responsibility for the souls and bodies which are perishing at our gates; a multitude who is sadly tossed between the conflicting arguments of the more strongly-biassed ladies whom we have just described, with the demoralising result that it generally leans in practice towards the former, and in theory towards the latter.
It is this great multitude of girls and women whom we would like to help by offering a few broad principles for their consideration; for principles underlie everything. And it is only by our grasp on principles that we can guide ourselves through the ever-varying details of duty.
Let us say at once that it is the right of all to be well dressed, because that means to be dressed suitably to the climate and circumstances in which they live, and to their occupation, age, and appearance. A woman may be quite as well dressed in print and serge as in velvet and satin. When you hear people complaining that “nowadays everybody will go so well dressed,” you hear a misuse of language; and language loosely used is a dangerous thing; because it leads to looseness of idea. Nobody has any right to complain of anybody’s being well dressed. What they really mean is that these are unsuitably dressed. And there is a great deal of unsuitable dress in the world of the kind, more or less in degree, of that seen in the daughter of a parvenu millionaire of the Western States, who, when she went to a sensible New England seminary, where the young ladies were expected to wait on themselves, descended to the scullery in a velvet robe and diamond earrings!
Anybody, therefore, is not well dressed whose attire unfits her for the performance of those actions which ought to be her duty. The tight-laced, be-flounced be-trained damsel proclaims to the world her utter unwomanliness. The nursery would soon make havoc in her finery. Let us hope she would never carry it into a sick room, and in the kitchen it would be a nuisance and a bad example. But then “Isn’t it pretty for wearing in the parlour during those hours when we are doing nothing?” Let us reply with other questions: “Ought there to be hours when we are doing nothing?” And “In providing ourselves with clothes only fit for such occasions, are we not falling into the error we often smile at in working men who will buy stiff, uncomely Sunday garments of broadcloth and silk hats, instead of providing themselves with gala suits of the sensible tweed that will serve afterwards for work-a-day wear?”