7 MAY 1881, Page 13

THE CLOTHES GF THE PERIOD.

1-170 the well-constituted male mind, the pleasure that women derive from their clothes is an agreeable subject of con- templation. The man who " never knows how one is dressed " is, very properly, regarded as a " brute" by women ; but they have a tendency to despise the other sort of man, who knows all about it, and discusses dress like a modiste.. The present writer, to whom no womenkiud belong, and who is innocent of technical knowledge in matters of female attire, flatters himself that he is the right man in the right place, when he attends the Private Views with which the month of May begins, and openly and above-board gives his whole mind to the clothes of the period, as displayed thereat. For the pictures are in the position of Mrs. Prig's quarrel with Mrs. Gump,—they can 'be attended to at any time ; but the Private-View costumes are du that of the "limited quantity of pickled salmon," and cannot. It is incidentally pleasant to observe what a taken-for-granted occasion the Private Views afford for " making believe very much " iu many ways,—for making believe that May is a genial and jocund month ; that dull care is "begone," and nobody has cold in the head any more ; for making believe that everybody loves Art, and understands (esthetics ; for making believe that :everybody lives in a vortex, adores actors, and knows them "off the stage ;" above all, for making believe that one possesses the 4"rerry " countenance. This latter affectation, the present writer %has observed, is effected by assuming a fixed stare, keeping the ,mouth open, and " tip-tilting " the nose. Mr. Tennyson has a great deal to answer for in inventing that unlucky epithet; no one wanted to have a good, old-fashioned " cocked " nose, and the nez retrousse had gone out of fashion with Lady Blessing- ton's novels. The mild quizzing of Mr. Burnand and the pictorial pillory of Mr. Du Maurier are taken for compliment, and make their objects hearth-rug heroes and the heroines of cliques. What with the Terry countenance, the Modjeska .modulation, the fashionable attitudes, and the clothes of the ;period, we elderly growlers find ourselves wondering what Englishwomen are coming to, and when these affectations and .vagaries will be blown away by it wholesome breeze of common- sense.

The colours of the clothes of the period exercise the male aniud as severely as do the cut. Why do women with red or _yellowish hair wear " dead " gold, and greens that remind the beholder of badly-cooked vegetables P Why do pale-faced, brown-haired women wear the deep-red and orange hues which can " go " only with the olive and pomegranate tints, and the blue-black hair of the South ? Who is accountable for the terrible terra-cotta garments iu which some otherwise harmless maidens pervade fashionable crowds, inspiring the observer 'with wonder, totally unmixed with admiration ?—slender girls arrayed in shapeless clothes, made apparently of slices of the wall of the new Natural History Museum at South Kensington; strong-minded young women in aggressive cloaks, so unspeak- ably hideous that we sigh for the Ulster of last season, which we then believed could not be surpassed in odiousness; awful things, :made of sage-green tweed with blue frills, or gosling woollen stuff tipped with pink ! The eel-skin style has been succeeded by the bag, and though the latter is more decent, it is not much less ugly. A woman with high, narrow shoulders, and thin, long arms, might do better than array herself in a black satin bag, with a running string at the neck and at the waist, a 4‘ piping " (such, we were assured by a sympathetic friend of the offenders' own sex, is the correct term by which to describe this contrivance), from which the skirt hangs shapelessly to within an inch of the ankles ; and she might crown the edifice more becomingly than with a bonnet—or was it a hat ?—like nothing iu Nature except a crumpled cabbage. `The" cosey," as an

ij unct to the tea-table, is of dubious elegance, as well as unques- tionably fatal to drinkable tea ; but when adapted as a cape to the shoulders of blooming girlhood, forming a straight line across the middle of its back and cutting its sleeves in two just above the ,elbow, it is the very most unsightly piece of dress that can be put on, especially if it is of a sickly colour. Salmon-pink satin, lining a big bonnet of crinkly crinoline, looking like half-a-dozen sham joined at the edges, would be trying to the best com- plexions; it was consoling to see it applied only to the worst. Why should a very pretty lady wear a flat gown of a peculiarly repulsive green in colour, but of rich velvet in material, and over it a hideous camla cloak of another and, if possible, more repulsive green, with a bunch of yellowish ribbon at the back,

and a plush bonnet like the vizor of a knight's helmet P Why should writing people, painting people, singing people, persons presumably intelligent, since they all do something that pleases the public and is paid for in money, array themselves in garments, of price indeed—shabbiness is not the note of the popular affectation—but which render them distressingly conspicuous ? These questions cannot fail to occur to men observing the humours of a select crowd, and especially as the dress of " the conflicting gender" tends more and more to simplicity. Of course, there will always be affected male idiots, long-haired and short-haired, with neckties that make us stare, and hats that make us wink by their bril- liancy ; but those are the mere " brats " of society, they are too insignificant to be offensive. Women are never insignificant, and that they should be infected with eccentricity and affecta- tion on the scale of the present manifestation of those maladies is deplorable. The bird's-nest hair, the pince-nez, the hands carried behind the back, the head poked forward, the hard, con- fident stare, the hunched-up shoulders, the clanking, uncanny ornaments, the aggressive air, the assured voice of one "school" of young ladies, and the sad, sombre, wan un- healthiness, the morbid, unbelieving, introspective rubbish of another, with the costuming business proper to both— the decor of the play-acting in which their life is passed— make old people look back regretfully to the days when Minna and Brenda Troil, Julia Mannering, and Miss Bertram were regarded as models for imitation, and even give a sigh of gentle regret to the memory of the "Keepsake " belles. They simpered, it is true, but they did not strut ; they wore their hair in ring- lets, and their eyelashes mostly on their cheeks ; but they did not affect paganism, " sauce," or " Chaff," nor did they regard notoriety as the salt of life. It is the passion for being remarked that makes the young women and the girls of the present day dress so absurdly and so hideously that a ladylike person in clothes which no one talks about is as " distinguished " as Lord Castlereagh at Vienna ; and that passion marks the measure of their departure from the standard of true womanhood. There is an amusing story in Belgravia for this mouth, called, "The Five-clawed Dragon," which relates the adventures of a set of Chinese damask window-curtains, with the inviolable and incommunicable im- perial pattern upon them. It must surely have beena piece`of that material which was conspicuous at the Private Views, form- ing the fearful and wonderful gown of a lady who was an object of as much curiosity as the portrait of Lord Beaconsfield by " Apelles," or that of the President of the Royal Academy by himself. Fancy having a " lane " made for one on account of one's clothes, and taking that for fame ! They must so take it, these dear, silly women who rejoice in the possession of unique gowns and incredible mantles, for otherwise they would not wear them. It is not conceiv- able that such gowns, and bonnets, and cloaks, such stacks of artificial flowers, such ropes of amber, such garniture of feathers, should ever be put on iu private life ; and it is to this perversion of the purpose of dress, this inartistic playing at Art, that the present writer, as an elderly growler, takes exception. Society, judged by the fashion of its clothes, is in anything but its right mind ; and it is lamentable that it should be thus dressed, and not ashamed.