AN /ESTHETIC FORECAST.
"WHAT a terrible reaction there will be, when everyone is tired of this !" Such was the exclamation which could not fail to rise to the lips of the most kindly observer of the ways of the feminine world, every time he was present at a private view, aesthetic tea, or any other occasion which brought together the leaders of a certain school of thought in matters of costume. Who does not know them all, and who cannot swiftly discriminate the true leaders who dress in a certain style because they really like it, from those with whom mere singu- larity passes for beauty, and who conceive that the more people there are who mutter "How frightful !" when they see them, the more artistically beautiful their attire must be ? The genuine reformers in Dress, while avoiding all primary colours with religious horror, do not love their semitones and tertiaries only because they are low in tone. They like subdued richness, colours that cannot be described without naming two or three colours ; and for the make of their dresses, they for the most part copy some picture of a world-renowned old master. All bring much individual taste to bear on the arrangement of their apparel, and with such success that many of these students of bygone times might have mounted the raised platform of the figure-painter and have been transferred to his canvas, without his having been able to suggest one alteration which would im- prove them; nay, more, he has often learnt from them more than he could have taught. The sham sthetes, on the contrary, to use that dreadful word, have for the last three or four years run about picture galleries, and other spots where men do most congregate, in garments expressly invented, as it would seem, to make the said men stare. Sometimes it was a hoydenish short- frock and tippet, and perky, would-be coal-scuttle bonnet ; at others, the young lady had become demure, and shrouded her- self entirely in a long, loose, "wobbling" cloak, of a dull brick- dust or sage-green, with a close-fitting bonnet to match, which turned a naturally good complexion into the faint, grey hue of boiled sago The sham aesthete never chooses pretty colours, and forgets that dress is intended to heighten beauty, and not to destroy it altogether. No one, however pretty, can look so, if she always wears sickly shades of ugly, debased-looking colours.
An abnegation of all colour will never make good colour, but most people seem to think it will. Real aesthetes and sham aesthetes have, however, for several years exercised a mighty influence over the dress of all, even of those who would much rather have resisted it. At first, the tertiaries in which artistic souls delighted could only be bOught in perhaps two shops. An uninformed person who procured for herself a pattern of peacock-blue or olive-green, and went into any of the great drapers' shops in Oxford Street or Regent Street to match it, never knew what a very unusual shade of colour she was asking for until she had been in half-a-dozen of them, in each and all of which the shopmen had been very certain that they would not have the slightest difficulty in supplying her with the article she wanted, and had all alike brought piles of blues and greens of every degree of virulence, against which her poor little pattern looked a mere soiled bit of cloth. It was the same with all the other secondary colours favoured by artistic ladies, especially with "fraises herasees," and what has been described as " the terrible terra-cotta." They were, until recently, only to be had at one shop ; but as the lovers of these shades have gone on loving them, and as more and more people have persisted in wearing them, and in strenuously avoiding all primary colours, not to mention such atrocities as aniline dyes, even Regent-street and Oxford-street shopkeepers now send out circulars praying you to inspect their " high-art " goods. It must be bitterly against the grain that they thus store their establishments with wares whose colouring seems to have been obtained by long exposure in a sunny south window, for English shopkeepers (though, of course, their main object is to stock their shops with things which will sell, and enable them to " turn over their money quickly ") have, as a rule, the usual healthy national preference for a strong chord of colour, boldly struck. No doubt, while paying an unwilling tribute to the current of fashion which set in the direction of pinks which had lost their identity, blues which were never seen in the sky, reds which had nothing martial in them, and whites which appeared to have lain in the dust, they knew that the day would come when strong colour would once more blaze forth in all its splendour. So far as houses are concerned, it has already come ; the " greenery-yallery, Grosvenor-Gallery, foot-in-the- grave " kind of colour is most decidedly on the wane, and in its place we have a large number of anchovy-sauce-coloured residences. Has the reaction with regard to dress set in, too ? We might well believe it, from the appearance of the shop-windows. One and all they are display- ing ribbons, dresses, and bonnets brighter and more bizarre than anything which has been seen for years. " Ribbon gar- dening," even when the bed is filled with alternating rows of scarlet geraniums and the yellowest of yellow calceolarias, must hide its diminished head, before the ribbons which now appear to be coming into fashion. Red and yellow and emerald-green and smalt, all figure together on the same ribbon or dress-piece ; or if they are not combined by the weaver, the art of the dress- maker hastens to remedy the oversight, and she knots four bright colours together to make bows and trimmings. At least, this is what we seem to gather from a survey of the shop- windows. Go where we will, ribbons, gown-pieces, parasols, all alike seem to be adaptations of what our astronomers have learnt by diligent study of the spectroscope. Each planet, we are told, supplies different rays, according to the minerals and metals which go to its composition, but no sort of combination that could be obtained from the spectroscope is omitted in our striped dresses and ribbons. Such colours do not look ill in a diagram, or in very small quantities in dress, and at present we only get them in small quantities, for ladies seem to be feeling their way and wearing them in moderation ; but when every- one has yielded to the new influence, the effect will be anything but beautiful. It is not that we are like Mrs. Tulliver and Mrs. Pullet, who " allays hung together in liking a spot or a sprig ;" while Mrs. Glegg was " contrairy, and held with a stripe ;" it is only that we wish our readers to remember that such startling contrasts can never look well, and that the secret of all good colour is focussing.
It has always been said that Mr. Worth has a large aviary filled with beautiful birds of every hue from all parts of the world, and that he spends hours in studying them. From these, and the strange harmonies brought out of dis- cord, by one magical bit of perfectly unexpected colouring which combines and reconciles all, it is asserted that he derives his inspiration for his most charming, but somewhat expensive dresses. What has inspired the colouring which at present animates our shop-windows, or, at any rate, an obtru- sive corner of them ; otherwise, whence came the crowd of purples and vivid reds, savouring of magenta, which were to be seen in the market place of the late Old English Fair at the Albert Hall ? At present, such signs of reaction are rare, and a crowd of ladies is a sight which gives a certain amount of gratification to the colour-sense. They look like a bed of richly-tinted African marigolds. Flowers of this colour are now in fashion, just as the modest daffodil was a season ago. Our strong conviction is that next year the crimson peony will be the rage, and our secret dread is that then the highest aim of women in dress, so far as re- gards colour, will be, to achieve a complete resemblance to a freshly-painted, scarlet-coloured pillar letter-box. Already, they have adopted that colour for their parasols.
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