Costume And Its Morals

________________________________________________
Title:     Costume And Its Morals
Author: E. Lynn Linton [More Titles by Linton]

Nothing is more decisively indicative of the real value or necessity of a thing than the fact that, while its presence is hardly noticeable, it is immediately missed and asked for when it disappears; and it is thus that the paramount importance of clothing asserts itself by the conspicuousness of its absence. Of course the first purpose of dress is, or should be, decency, and for this, quantity rather than quality is looked for. But, as with the little cloud no larger than a man's hand, so from the primary fig-leaf or first element of dress, how great things have arisen! In respect of amplification, dress may be said to have attained its maximum when men wore ruffs which nearly concealed their heads, and shoes a quarter of a yard longer than their feet; but "fashion" has its day, and now dress threatens to dwindle into something not far from its original or fig-leaf dimensions.

Another perfectly legitimate object of dress is attractiveness, so that by its aid our persons may be set off to the best advantage; dress should also be individual and symbolic, so as to indicate clearly the position and character which we desire to obtain and hold. It is not of men's attire that we have now to speak; that has been settled for them by the tailors' strike, which practically ordained that he that was shabby should be shabby, or even shabbier still, and he that had allowed himself to be thrust into the straitened trousers and scanty coatee of last year should continue to exhibit his proportions long after the grotesqueness of his figure had been recognised even by himself.

But it is of the dress of our women that we are compelled to testify, and it can hardly be denied that at the present moment it offends grievously in three particulars. It is inadequate for decency; it lacks that truthfulness which is, and should be, the base of all that is attractive and beautiful; and in its symbolism it is in the highest degree objectionable, for it not only aims at what is unreal and false, but it simulates that which is positively hateful and meretricious, so that it is difficult now for even a practised eye to distinguish the high-born maiden or matron of Belgravia from the Anonymas who haunt the drive and fill our streets.

This indictment is, it may be said, a severe one; but if we examine, so far as male critics may venture to do, the costume of a fashionable woman of the day, it can hardly be said to be unjust. The apparent object of modern female dress is to assimilate its wearers as nearly as possible in appearance to women of a certain class--the class to which it was formerly hardly practicable to allude, and yet be intelligible to young ladies; but all that is changed, and the habits and customs of the women of the demi-monde are now studied as if they were indeed curious, but exceptionally admirable also, and thus a study unseemly and unprofitable has begotten a spirit of imitation which has achieved a degrading success.

"Our modest matrons meet," not "to stare the strumpet down," but to compare notes, to get hints, and to engage in a kind of friendly rivalry--in short, to pay that homage to Vice, and in a very direct way too, which Vice is said formerly to have paid to Virtue. Paint and powder are of course the first requisites for the end in view, and these adjuncts have to be laid on with such skill as the débutante or her toilette-maid possesses, which is sometimes so small as to leave their handiwork disgustingly coarse and apparent.

There are pearl-powder, violet-powder, rouge, bistre for the eyelids, belladonna for the eyes, whitelead and blacklead, yellow dye and mineral acids for the hair--all tending to the utter destruction of both hair and skin. The effect of this "diaphanous" complexion and "aurified" hair (we borrow the expressions) in a person intended by nature to be dark, or swarthy, is most comical; sometimes the whitelead is used so unsparingly that it has quite a blue tint, which glistens until the face looks more like a death's head anointed with phosphorus and oil for theatrical purposes than the head of a Christian gentlewoman. It may be interesting to know, and we have the information from high, because soi-disant fashionable authority, that the reign of golden locks and blue-white visages is drawing to a close, and that it is to be followed by bronze complexions and blue-black hair--_à l'Africaine we presume.

When fashionable Madame has, to her own satisfaction, painted and varnished her face, she then proceeds, like Jezebel, to tire her head, and, whether she has much hair or little, she fixes on to the back of it a huge nest of coarse hair generally well baked in order to free it from the parasites with which it abounded when it first adorned the person of some Russian or North-German peasant girl. Of course this gives an unnaturally large and heavy appearance to the cerebellar region; but nature is not exactly what is aimed at, still less refinement.

If this style be not approved of, there is yet another fashion--namely, to cut the hair short in a crop, créper it, curl it, frizzle it, bleach it, burn it, and otherwise torture it until it has about as much life in it as last year's hay; and then to shampoo it, rumple it, and tousle it, until the effect is to produce the aspect of a madwoman in one of her worst fits. This method, less troublesome and costly than the other, may be considered even more striking, so that it is largely adopted by a number of persons who are rather disreputable, and poor. As is well known, not all of the asinine tribe wear asses' ears; nevertheless some of these votaries of dress find their ears too long, or too large, or ill-placed, or, what comes to the same thing, inconveniently placed, but a prettier or better-shaped pair are easily purchased, admirably moulded in gutta-percha or some other plastic material; they are delicately colored, fitted up with earrings and a spring apparatus, and they are then adjusted on to the head, the despised natural ears being of course carefully hidden from view.

It is long enough since a bonnet meant shelter to the face or protection to the head; that fragment of a bonnet which at present represents the head-gear, and which was some years ago worn on the back of the head and nape of the neck, is now poised on the front, and ornamented with birds, portions of beasts, reptiles, and insects. We have seen a bonnet composed of a rose and a couple of feathers, another of two or three butterflies or as many beads and a bit of lace, and a third represented by five green leaves joined at the stalks. A white or spotted veil is thrown over the visage, in order that the adjuncts that properly belong to the theatre may not be immediately detected in the glare of daylight; and thus, with diaphanous tinted face, large painted eyes, and stereotyped smile, the lady goes forth looking much more as if she had stepped out of the green room of a theatre, or from a Haymarket saloon, than from an English home.

But it is in evening costume that our women have reached the minimum of dress and the maximum of brass. We remember a venerable old lady whose ideas of decorum were such that in her speech all above the foot was ankle, and all below the chin was chest; but now the female bosom is less the subject of a revelation than the feature of an exposition, and charms that were once reserved are now made the common property of every looker on. A costume which has been described as consisting of a smock, a waistband, and a frill seems to exceed the bounds of honest liberality, and resembles most perhaps the attire mentioned by Rabelais, "nothing before and nothing behind, with sleeves of the same." Not very long ago two gentlemen were standing together at the Opera. "Did you ever see anything like that?" inquired one, with a significant glance, directing the eyes of his companion to the uncovered bust of a lady immediately below. "Not since I was weaned," was the suggestive reply. We are not aware whether the speaker was consciously or unconsciously reproducing a well-known archiepiscopal mot.

Though our neighbors are not strait-laced, so far as bathing-costume is concerned, they are less tolerant of the nude than we are in this highly-favored land. There was lately a story in one of the French papers that at a certain ball a lady was requested to leave the room because a chain of wrought gold, suspended from shoulder to shoulder, was the sole protection which it seemed to her well to wear on her bosom. To have made the toilette correspond throughout, the dress should have consisted of a crinoline skirt, which, though not so ornamental, would have been not less admirable and more effective.

Of course there are women to whom nature has been niggardly in the matter of roundness of form, but even these need not despair; if they cannot show their own busts, they can show something nearly as good, since we read the following, which we forbear to translate:--"Autre excentricité. C'est l'invention des poitrines adhérentes à l'usage des dames trop éthérées. Il s'agit d'un système en caoutchouc rose, qui s'adapte à la place vide comme une ventouse à, la peau, et qui suit les mouvements de la respiration avec une précision mathématique et parfaite."

Of those limbs which it is still forbidden to expose absolutely, the form and contour can at least be put in relief by insisting on the skirts being gored and straightened to the utmost; indeed, some of the riding-habits we have seen worn are in this respect so contrived that, when viewed from behind, especially when the wearer is not of too fairy-like proportions, they resemble a pair of tight trousers rather than the full flowing robe which we remember as so graceful and becoming to a woman. It will be observed that the general aim of all these adventitious aids is to give an impression of earth and the fullness thereof, to appear to have a bigger cerebellum, a more sensuous development of limb, and a greater abundance of flesh than can be either natural or true; but we are almost at a loss how to express the next point of ambition with which the female mind has become inspired.

The women who are not as those who love their lords wish to be--indeed, as we have heard, those who have no lords of their own to love--have conceived the notion that, by simulating an "interesting condition" (we select the phrase accepted as the most delicate), they will add to their attractions; and for this purpose an article of toilet--an india-rubber anterior bustle--called the demi-temps, has been invented, and is worn beneath the dress, nominally to make the folds fall properly, but in reality, as the name betrays, to give the appearance of a woman advanced in pregnancy.

No person will be found to say that the particular condition, when real, is unseemly or ridiculous. What it is when assumed, and for such a purpose--whether it is not all that and something worse--we leave our readers to decide for themselves. It is said that one distinguished personage first employed crinoline in order to render more graceful her appearance while in this situation; but these ladies with their ridiculous demi-temps, without excuse as without shame, travesty nature in their own persons in a way which a low-comedy actress would be ashamed to do in a tenth-rate theatre. The name is French, let us hope the idea is also; and this reminds us of the title of a little piece lately played in Paris by amateurs for some charitable purpose--Il n'y a plus d'enfants. No; in France they may indeed say, "It is true il n'y a plus d'enfants, but then have we not invented the demi-temps?"

And if each separate point of female attire and decoration is a sham, so the whole is often a deception and a fraud. It is not true that by taking thought one cannot add a cubit to one's stature, for ladies, by taking thought about it, do add, if not a cubit, at least considerably, to their height, which, like almost everything about them, is often unreal. With high heels, toupé, and hat, we may calculate that about four or five inches are altogether borrowed for the occasion. Thus it comes to be a grave matter of doubt, when a man marries, how much is real of the woman who has become his wife, or how much of her is her own only in the sense that she has bought, and possibly may have paid for it. To use the words of an old writer, "As with rich furred conies, their cases are far better than their bodies; and, like the bark of a cinnamon-tree, which is dearer than the whole bulk, their outward accoutrements are far more precious than their inward endowments."

Of the wife elect, her bones, her debts, and her caprices may be the only realities which she can bestow on her husband. All the rest--hair, teeth, complexion, ears, bosom, figure, including the demi-temps--are alike an imposition and a falsehood. In such case we should recommend, for the sake of both parties, that during at least the wedding-tour, the same precautions should be observed as when Louis XV. travelled with "the unblushing Chateauroux with her bandboxes and rougepots at his side, so that at every new station a wooden gallery had to be run up between their lodgings."

It may be said that in all this we are ungenerous and ungrateful, and that in discussing the costume of women we are touching on a question which pertains to women more than to men. But is that so? Are we not by thus exposing what is false, filthy, and meretricious, seeking to lead what was once dignified by the name of "the fair sex" from a course alike unbecoming and undignified to one more worthy of the sex and its attributes? Most men like to please women, and most women like to please men. For, as has been well said, "Pour plaire aux femmes il faut être considéré des hommes, et pour être considéré des hommes il faut savoir plaire aux femmes."

We have a right to suppose that women do not adopt a fashion or a costume unless they suppose that it will add to their attractions in general, and possibly also please men in particular. This being so, it may be well to observe that these fashions do not please or attract men, for we know they are but the inventions of some vulgar, selfish perruquier or modiste. We may add that if we want to study the nude we can do so in the sculpture galleries, or among the Tableaux Vivants, at our ease; and that for well-bred or well-educated and well-born women, or even for only fashionable and fast women, to approximate in their manners, habits, and dress to the members of the demi-monde is a mistake, and a grievous one, if they wish to be really and adequately appreciated by men whose good opinion, if not more, they would desire to possess.

[The end]
E. Lynn Linton's essay: Costume And Its Morals

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN