THE DIRECTOIRE COSTUME.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 311, 25 September 1908, Page 3

THE DIRECTOIRE COSTUME.

The ' Directoiro costume/ seems to Ibo troubling tho minds of many English writers. Says 0110 of them The "Directoiro costume has been born again, a hundred years too late. If you put the' hands of the clock back, a hundred years, you have a vastly different world from to-day. There wore no automobiles and- there we're no largo drapery stores;, neither, had the afternoon visit and reception, becomo the. social riuisit is tojday, wearing the victims, of, society to a shadow at tho end of a long Beason. Imagine, shopping or flitting from drawing-room, to. drawing-room in a Diroc- . toiro dress, with its long train and its length in. front; the; thing is not feasible. Nor is the 1908. woman fitted for. it in a physical sense. More mellowed times, times of slower locomotion—though I am not suggesting that the Directoire period had not its feverish moments—gave, woman another, figure and another face—a Directoiro face, which she has now lost. , To-day she has a tailor-made face. -Imagine the absurdity of wearing a tailor-mado from ten to one o'clock in the afternoon, and thence onward until half-past six. a Dirtctpire gown. The movement, of limbs, the very ideas of the woman, must change when she skips from one century to another in her dress. I do not pose as a dress.expert, but this is an apparent enough proposition. If the modern woman could pass her days in sauntering through a palace garden, in exchsUiging "badinage" and "persiflage" v/ii 1:,-courtiers and gallants, then, 110 doubt, ib*:-. '.'.Quid seem to bo something fitting •an; •••i>ruper in the Directoire dress But • the greater part, of the. feminine wn.-i T that is to say. of the "femnies du Oi-,i : do not pass their days. in palace , w.: they prefer the less romantic -surjijtu.uiri'jfs of a picture gallery, of a crowded tr.--nom, and of the breathless "At Homo" with bridge in the back drawing-room. And the modern god, the motor-car. Imagine whirling through tho air on the. back of a ,60-h.p. in a dress that was designed for tile 'leisured ago. As to the moral aspects of .' Sartor Rcsartiis, that is. a point wo do not ' wish to touch ; it is always delicate to argue what is or is not decent in clothing, and bo much depends on tho character and mien of tho person clothcd.