The lengths to which women will go in their desire to appear in the fashion, even if they are not, is shown by the business which a lady in New York is said to have founded. According to all accounts, she deals in nothing but discarded Paris waistbands—that is to say, those which bear the names of well-known dressmakers. Women in plenty in New York will buy these little strips of silk in order to have them stitched into their own dresses, to give their friends the impression that their garments were made in the French capital.
Laws intended for the good of trade have brought in fashions, as in the case of the statute cap. The very objections made by religious sects such as the Puritans and Quakers, who have departed from extravagance and superfluity, have given rise to new fashions of plainness. Even Quaker ladies must have shown their love of dress, for at a meeting in 1726 the following message was sent by some of the stronger-minded of them to their fellow-women:—
“As first, that immodest fashion of hooped petticoats or the imitation, either by something put into their petticoats to make them set full, or any other imitation whatever, which we take to be but a branch springing from the same corrupt root of pride. And also that none of our ffriends accustom themselves to wear their gowns with superfluous folds behind, but plain and decent, nor go without aprons, nor to wear superfluous gathers or plaits in their caps or pinners, nor to wear their heads drest high behind; neither to cut or lay their hair on their foreheads or temples.
“And that ffriends be careful to avoid wearing striped shoes or red and white heeled shoes or clogs or shoes trimmed with gaudy colours.
“And also that no ffriends use that irreverent practice of taking snuff or handing a snuff-box one to the other in meeting.
“Also that ffriends avoid the unnecessary use of fans in meeting, lest it direct the mind from the more inward and spiritual exercises which all ought to be concerned in.
“And also that ffriends do not accustom themselves to go with bare breasts or bare necks.”
Perhaps in a minor way superstitions also have tended to keep up fashions. At a wedding, for instance, it is always said that a bride should wear
Something old and something new,
Something borrowed and something blue.
The enactments, however, which were directed against excess in dress do not seem to have always been so successful. The part which the law has played with regard to dress in our own country has been very considerable, and it may be of interest to consider briefly one or two of the so-called sumptuary laws.