The coronation garments of the Emperors of Russia are said to be gorgeously beautiful.
It seems hardly necessary to assert that embroidery has always been especially applicable to dress. Each garment, being individualized by the design depicted on it, was fitted for individual uses and occasions. The conqueror’s palmated mantle, the coronation robe, the bridal garment, the costume of the peasant for festival days, and the officiating vestments of the priests for special services of prayer and praise—these were loyally or piously worked; they descended from generation to generation as family treasures or as historical memorials, and sometimes as holy relics,[472] till they and the call for them, were swept away at once by social changes; yet some still remain and hold their place. Priestly garments, together with Church decorations, never laid aside in the Roman and Greek Churches, are being partially revived in our own; and for secular adornment the embroiderer is often called upon to work a garland, to enwreathe the form of a pretty woman, to lie on her shoulders and encircle her waist.
The greatest loss to the art is that men as a rule have ceased to individualize themselves, or their position or office by dress,[473] and have left entirely to the women the pleasure and duty of making themselves as lovely and conspicuous as their circumstances will permit. The same linen and broadcloth are cut in the same shapes, of which the only merit is that they are said to be comfortable, and whose highest aim is to be spotless and unwrinkled; these show the altered conditions of the highly civilized man, and woman too, for he has long left behind him the idea of dazzling the female eye or heart by the attraction of colour. This applies only to European costume at home or in the colonies. The East still retains its pleasure in gorgeous combinations, in which man enfolds his person, and shows how beautiful he can make himself when thus clothed, in accordance with the classical axioms, as to how much of the human form should be revealed, and how much concealed.
The principle on which the ancients embroidered their garments was like that of the Indians, the large surfaces plain, or covered with quiet diapers or spots, the rich ornaments being reserved for the borders, the girdles and the scarves. Their garments hung loose from the shoulders or girdle; whether long or short they clung to the figure or fluttered in the wind. The long flowing robes to the feet veiled the form completely, and were only thrown off for the battle or the chase, or in the struggles for victory in the races and games. Dress, in the supreme reign of beauty, was intended to flow around, or to conceal, but never to disguise, the human frame it enclosed.
Homer thus describes Juno’s toilet before calling on Jupiter:—
“Around her next a heavenly mantle flow’d,
That rich with Pallas’ labour’d colours glow’d;
Large clasps of gold the foldings gather’d round;
A golden zone her swelling bosom bound.”
Iliad, xiv. v. 207.
The Greeks certainly wore delicate and tasteful embroidery on their garments, frequently finished with splendid borders, while the large space between was dotted with stars or some simple pattern. We learn this from the paintings on Greek fictile vases. In the British Museum there is a little bronze statuette of Minerva (with twinkling diamond eyes). She has a broad band of embroidered silver foliage from her throat to her feet.
As the beauty of Greek forms acted and reacted on the beauty of their “Art of Dress,” so we may be certain that all deformity of dress has been produced by deformity of race in mind or body, and that climate is an important factor in both. The cold of the farthest north has produced people short, fat, and hairy; which natural gifts have been supplemented by their warm clothes or coverings, in the same way that a “cosy” covers a teapot. Flowing garments there would be utterly out of place, petticoats are unknown, and the Lapp hangs out nothing that can be the vehicle for carrying an icicle. Their dresses, or cases, are planned to keep out the cold, and to place another atmosphere between the heart of the breathing mass, and the cruel, cutting, outer wind. Hence, the materials used are not only woven hair, but the furry skins themselves. In the south, under the sunshine, dress is for the greater part of the year only needed for decency and beauty. The flowing and delicate cottons and silks and fine woollens, are shaped to cover and adorn the beautiful forms, which for entire isolation take refuge in the never-failing mantle. The mantle was the great opportunity for the embroiderer’s craft. Alkisthenes, the Sybarite, had a garment of such magnificence that when it was exhibited in the Temple of Juno at Lacinium, where all Italy was congregated, it attracted such universal admiration that it was sold to the Carthaginians by Dionysius the Elder for 120 talents. The ground was purple, wrought all over with animals, except the centre, where were seen Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Minerva, Venus, and Themis. On one border was the figure of Alkisthenes himself, on the other was depicted the emblematic figure of his native city, Sybaris. The size of the garment was Homeric—it was fifteen cubits, or twenty-two feet in breadth.[474]
That the ladies of Greece in the fourth century carried down the historical and Homeric traditions of the embroidery frame, and made it part of their daily lives, while the Persian women of rank left such work to their slaves, is evident from the pretty legend told of Alexander the Great, who desiring to beguile the weariness of his prisoners, the wife and family of Darius, sent them some of his garments to embroider. When it was reported to him that these princesses were much mortified, believing it was a suggestion of their fallen fortunes, Alexander hastened to reassure them—saying that his own mother and sisters occupied themselves in embroidering dresses.