THE DROLLERIES OF CLOTHES

By AGNES REPPLIER

(1858-). One of the most noted American essayists. Among her books are:Essays in Miniature; Essays in Idleness; In the Dozy Hours; A Happy Half Century; Americans and Others.

Miss Agnes Repplier for many years has kept her high place as one of the most popular American essayists. She has written upon a great variety of subjects, and always with charm and substantial thought. The essay onThe Drolleries of Clothesshows with how much good spirit one may write even a critical essay.

In that engaging volume, “The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday,” Lord Frederic Hamilton,[152]commenting on the beauty and grace of the Austrian women, observes thoughtfully: “In the far-off seventies ladies did not huddle themselves into a shapeless mass of abbreviated oddments of material. They dressed, and their clothes fitted them. A woman upon whom nature has bestowed a good figure was able to display her gifts to the world.”

That a woman to whom nature had been less kind was compelled to display her deficiencies is a circumstance ignored by Hamilton, who, being a man of the world and a man of fashion, regarded clothes as the insignia of caste. The costly costumes, the rich and sweeping draperies in which he delighted, were not easy of imitation. The French ladies who followed the difficult lead of the Empress Eugenia[153]supported the transparent whiteness of their billowy skirts with at leasta dozen fine, sheer petticoats. Now it is obvious that no woman of the working classes (except a blanchisseuse de fin[154]who might presumably wear her customers' laundry) could afford a dozen white petticoats. But when it comes to stripping off a solitary petticoat, no one is too poor or too plain to be in the fashion. When it comes to clipping a dress at the knee, the factory girl is as fashionable as the banker's daughter, and far more at her ease. Her “abbreviated oddments” are a convenience in the limited spaces of the mill, and she is hardier to endure exposure. She thanks the kindly gods who have fitted the fashions to her following, and she takes a few more inches off her solitary garment to make sure of being in the style.

Not that women of any class regard heat or cold, comfort or discomfort, as a controlling factor in dress. In this regard they are less highly differentiated from the savage than are men, who, with advancing civilization, have modified their attire into something like conformity to climate and to season. The savage, even the savage who, like the Tierra del Fuegian,[155]lives in a cold country, considers clothes less as a covering than as an adornment. So also do women, who take a simple primitive delight in garments devoid of utilitarianism. For the past half-dozen years American women have worn furs during the sweltering heat of American summers. Perhaps by the sea, or in the mountains, a chill day may now and then warrant this costume; but on the burning city streets the fur-clad females, red and panting, have been pitiful objects to behold. They suffered, as does the Polar bear in August in the zoo; but they suffered irrationally, and because they lacked the wit to escape from self-inflicted torment.

For the past two winters women have worn fur coats or capes which swathed the upper part of their bodies in voluminous folds, and stopped short at the knee. From that point down, the thinnest of silk stockings have been all the coveringpermitted. The theory that, if one part of the body be protected, another part may safely and judiciously be exposed, has ever been dear to the female heart. It may be her back, her bosom, or her legs which the woman selects to exhibit. In any case she affirms that the uncovered portions of her anatomy never feel the cold. If they do, she endures the discomfort with the stoicism of the savage who keeps his ornamental scars open with irritants, and she is nerved to endurance by the same impelling motive.

This motive is not personal vanity. Vanity has had little to do with savage, barbarous, and civilized customs. The ancient Peruvians who deformed their heads, pressing them out of shape; the Chinese who deform their feet, bandaging them into balls; the Africans who deform their mouths, stretching them with wooden discs; the Borneans who deform their ears, dragging the lobes below their shoulder blades; the European and American women who deformed their bodies, tightening their stays to produce the celebrated “hour-glass” waist, have all been victims of something more powerful than vanity, the inexorable decrees of fashion.

As a matter of fact the female mind is singularly devoid of illusions. Women do not think their layers of fat or their protruding collar bones beautiful and seductive. They display them because fashion makes no allowance for personal defects, and they have not yet reached that stage of civilization which achieves artistic sensibility, which ordains and preserves the eternal law of fitness. They know, for example, that nuns, waitresses, and girls in semi-military uniforms look handsomer than they are, because of straight lines and adroit concealment; but they fail to derive from this knowledge any practical guidance.

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