THE FASHIONS.
DIRECT legislation may be applicable enough for some cases, but we doubt it in the case of fashion. Our active contemporary the Doi& News makes a bold and virtuous protest against the prodigious expensiveness of dress" cultivated by our well-to-do classes, the immorality of the unpaid debt, and the oppression of Is subject class occasioned by the elaborateness of the costume and the selfish thoughtlessness of our belles, who withhold their orders and require them to be executed in a hurry. The able writer contrasts the drawingroom and the workshop of the needkwoman —a painful contrast. Yet the history of sumptuary laws has not warranted the belief that expensiveness in dress can be put down by preaching at it or legislating at it ; and if it could, we do not know that the needlewomen would petition in favour of any bill for the purpose. The thoughtlessness of the belles, no doubt, does cause many a painful scene.
"Every year we are told that it is the crowding of almost all the dressmaking into one quarter of the year, which causes the long hours, the crowded workrooms, the over-stimulating diet, the universal hurry and worry, from February till June, which regularly send a crowd of victims to the hospital, the brothel, the madhouse, and the grave. Every year the ladies who help to form the great London season wait for the newest caprice of the sovereign leader of fashion, whether foreign empress or indigenous belle,, and then all rush together to the dresstnakers, with their multifarious orders, making an impracticable speed the condition of their custom. Do ladies mean to do the same this year ? Are they now waiting for some latest patterns from the-dictators of fashion before they make up their minds what they will wear If so, let them at least abstain from showing themselves at the May meetings, and from pretending to be charitable six months hence to those whom they are dooming to ruin now. The offence is bad enough,
without the hypocrisy which would atone for it with sighs and sovereigns.'
But the "sighs and sovereigns" are better than want of feeling or want of help. Our belles are not crael if the suffering be brought distinctly home to their apprehension : the difficulty is, to associate the gay brilliancy of the drawingroom with the squalid suffering of the workroom ; still greater, to suppose that any injury can be inflicted through the smiling modiste who receives orders as if they were blessings from Heaven, and is only too grateful if allowed to make the most elaborate dress in the twinkling of a needle. The belle is only the last in a series of causes; and we must look to other circumstances in our social state for the true reasons why workwomen consent to stitch their fingers off, to watch their eyes out, and starve themselves to death in toiling against lime for the brilliancy of an hour's display. The belles would not give orders for dresses to be made in no time, if they were not invited by the offer of the dressmaker ; the dressmaker would not offer if she did not find slaves ready and willing to execute the miracle. But we need not wait for a social reform to rescue the oppressed, maddened, and starving workwomen. That doomed race is about to be destroyed, is undergoing the process of destruction, and is succeeded by an industrial race working much more effectually and much more independently. The instrument for that great social change is one that we described some time since—it is the sewing-machine.* There is something amusing in the idea that the suffering is caused by incessant desire for "consummate newness" in the dress of the belles. The " newness " is the invention of the trade ; and it frequently is a long while coming about. We have seen in autumn or winter the " new " prints of next year ; we have seen in the cold months "the shawl" of the next summer season. Invention is labouring months before to produce the " surprise " of the drawingroom ; and the haste at last is excited by the impatience of belles to anticipate each other in discovering the secrets of the trade, rather than in any original impulse of their own. It is the trade, whether of the tailor or of the dressmaker, the manufacturer of staffs or the manufacturer of cloths, which really originates the fashion ; each endeavouring to promote the sale of its own wares by inventing varieties, and keeping the secret in order that the " newness " may not evaporate. Fashions are bottled up to be consumed in a state of effervescence ; and it is this which occasions the semblance of hurry far more than the caprice of the belles, who have, alas ! little share in inventing their own dress.
Perhaps it is their exclusion from the council which makes them consent to wear the ugly coverings invented either by the fagged brains of tradesmen, simply for the sake of change, or devised by some distinguished individual to conceal infirmities or the dilapidations of years. The hoops of the passing day are ascribed to an imperial wish for temporary concealment ; the flounces were promoted if not invented by manufacturers, who introduced the superfluity into the very texture of the stuff. Fashion is the competition of commonplace to imitate the extravagances of a palled invention. Those who are very " distinguished," very pretty, or very engaging, may make a costume look piquante, and may inveigle others into it who make it simply look ridiculous. Fashion can see its own deformities by viewing itself in the mirror of time. What is more ludicrous than a past fashion? The Chinese and the chimney-sweep, described. by Hazlitt as thrown into inextinguishable laughter on meeting each other in the streets, are not more absurd than belles our beaux of two different periods in each other's eyes. A fine woman screwed into a pair of stays like a pound of moist sugar— her eyebrows drawn up by the tightening of her hair over a cushion—the brilliancy of her locks deadened under a fog of powder—her cheeks spotted by court-plaster—the pound of sugar stuck into a silken structure like the bell-glass of a lamp—is an oddity at once ugly and ludicrous in the eyes of a modern beau; whose coat, on the patto.rn of the old Chelsea Pensioner, sleek and jejune in its fall, imparts to his figure a breadth at the extremities, a lankness of chest, and a lax straitness, which would make him a feeble figure-of-fun if he were seen by one of Elizabeth's gallants..
Fashion and art are antipodes to each other. It is the purpose of art to use materials so as to set forth the principal object and its accessories with the greatest advantage, and in consistency each with itself. Thus, the costume that is charming, beauf dignified, tasteful, or in any way appropriate in picture, seldom sub, serves very rigidly to fashion. Hence artists are always teasing their sitters to depart from the mode. If belles would snatch an inspiration from art and become their own modistes, it might be for the benefit of all parties ; if beaux were their own tailors, they would not consent to wear the slop clothing which is foisted upon them by the wholesale tailor in the name of fashion. Each would eon.suit the character and requirements of her and his own figure. The consumption of stuffs and of ornaments would probably not
be less than it is now ; nay, it is probable that the variety would be indefinitely extended, while the desire to bring out and com plete an effectual design would induce the fair one to allow her self and her workwomen, a little more time for the great achievement. Certain it is that the woman whohas taste, means, and
good sense, may so set forth her own beauty as to extort a homage which no heaping of lace and flounces can earn. Admiratien, beggared in expression, vents its delight by calling her "a pmtore "—a picture which Titian might have been proud to paint : but we cannot find its original in Le Follet.
• See Spectator for August 23, 1556—" Painless Extinction of Semustresses."
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