GERMAN STATE COSTUMES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5917, 23 August 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

GERMAN STATE COSTUMES.

'It is my desire,' remarks the German Emperor in the habilment edict recently promulgated from the Wartburg, in which his Imperial Majesty indicates the kind of costume iv future to be assumed by civilians entering the Court of Berlin, 'that, with regard to the dresses to be worn at my court, the good manners and customs of former ages relating to the garments worn should be revived.' 'Thus the youthful and energetic Kaiser directs that, white or black breeches—according to the rank of the wearer—and shoes with buckles should be donned by civilians in gala garb. There is a chapter and verse for the designation of rank by means of tin! hue of the nether garments worn. The sergeants of the French army were, prior to the Revolution, permitted to j mark their second year's tenure of noncommissioned rank by having their white keysormere breeches died black. The privileges endowed them, besides, with a perquisite not to be despised, since the storekeeper continued to issue to them every year a pair of white smallclothes a-pieee, which they punctually sold. The breeches and shoes with buckles' innovation is, however, said to lie only 'permissible' and not strictly ■ enjoined ;' still the civilian who is ambitious to lie a persona grata at the Scbloss will have very little hesitation, we should say, in forthwith arraying himself in shorts and square-toed 'esearpins.' That prudence as regards per-

sonal appearance is the twin brother of politeness is evident from an old French epigram which may he thus translated, ' To a land where a humpback is king, a hump true or false you should bring ; for backs that are flat are coldly looked at in the land where the humpback is king.' Analogously, the chamberlains of the Court of Berlin might not actually exclude from the illustrious presence of the soverign a civilian who came in trousers and patent leather boots : still, pantaloons would he • coldly looked at' in a brilliant circle where the wearing of breeches and buckled pumps had been recommended on the highest authority. As regards the coat, the Emperor has set his face against the ' Swallow-tail,' ' claw-hammer,' or steelpen ' dress garment which, for the last sixty years, has been mercilessly inflicted on civilised society all over the world. His Majesty prescribes, instead, a black cloth coat of antique shape, with black satin facings and collar, a long satin vest, breeches as 'per last,' and silk stockings, all black ; shoes with polished buckles" aud a throe-cornered hat without feathers. A sword must be worn : and, if the civilian chooses, he may discard cloth and kerseymere for his coat and vest, and have his entire habilment—minus the stockings—of black satin. In laying down the law for a slightly sombre, but, at the same time, stately costume, the young Emperor offers evidence of being thoroughly well aware of what he is about. To the uninitiated, it might seem as though his Majesty intended to impart to his civilian courtiers the aspect of so many undertaker's men of the 18th century ; while even more irreverent critics might opine that a gentleman clad from head to foot in sable and shiny satin would present an undignified semblance to the advertisement of a blacking manufacturer. The Emperor, however, is, without doubt, well read in the civic as well as the military 'fasti' of his country, and he has remembered that black cloth or silk was the habitual wear of the Huguenot gentleman who crowded to the Marches of Brandenburg after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to find the most cordial welcome and the most generous protection at the hand-* of Friedrich William I. Tho antiGalieian tendencies of the German Emperor are generally supposed to bo rather pronounced than otherwise ; and the unthinking might be apt to jump at tho. conclusion that his Majesty has already been faithful to his dislike for things French in practically modelling his new court dross on the fashions worn by French Huguenot gentlemen 200 years ago ; but a little reflection will show that tho black court dress now sought to be naturalized at the Court of Berlin is only the survival of a costume originally worn by a class whom systematic outrage had rendered unrelentingly hostile to the French Government of" the day. 'Gentlemen, behold your persecutors !' cried the commander of the Huguenot brigade at the Boync, as waving his sword, he pointed to the French auxiliaries of James 11., and if color and cut of garments have not lost their symbolic meaning and political purport, the revived dress of the Huguenot refugees now prescribed as a Prussian Court costume, should be considered to be as distinctly inimical to France as the uniforms and the death'shead and crossbones equipments of tho Black Brunswickers were to Napoleon I. In ordaining a now court dress the German Emperor must have felt himself in the presence of a great peril which natural adroitness and his manifestly minute acquaintance with the details of historic fashions has happily enabled him to surmount. There used to be a 'coat of antique shape' made, now of cloth, now of velvet, now of silk, which throughout the last half of the eighteenth century, and during the first decade of the present one, was worn at every Court in Europe. It was profusely adorned with silk embroidery, and had, as accessories, a brocaded satin waistcoat, continuations of black silk or satin, white silk stockings, buckled shoes', a bag-wig, a three-cornered hat, and a ' jabot' and ruffles of point lace. Such a' coat, erstwile worn by one of our ambassadors abroad, has long been ou view at the South Kensington Museum. Unfortunately the name of this costume is distinctly and irrevocably French. It is called ' habit d la Francam'.' It yet dimly survives in one of the three dresses which civilians, not being diplomatists or deputy lieutenants, are entitled to wear at English levee*. One is a coat of black velvet, accompanied by black smalls and black silk rose, with a lace cravat and ruffles, cut steel buttons, buckled shoos, and a black sword with a cut steel hilt. Another is the. more generally worn Court swallow-tail of dark blue or claret color, embellished with a little gold-lace at the collar, cuffs, and pocket, with trousers to match, a white vest, a cocked hat, and a sword with a gilt hilt. The Lord Chamberlain, however, has not yet promulgated any prohibition as to the wearing of the third and oldest of the civilian Court dresses, and provincial mayors, and even old time London Alderman, occasionally make their appearance at St James's in a curiously .(U.-iiiif modification of the old ' habit tl la Francaise." Its use is growing rarer and rarer every year : but it has notbeen distinctly forbidden by the English Court, and can scarcely be said to be entirely extinct, Tbe • habit d la Fran(.,<•'.>.'(','which was incomplete without a black silk bow, supposed to represent a bag-wig, sewn on to the back of the coat between the shoulders, suddenly and violently disappeared from France at the Revolution. Brilliant and fantastic as were the offical costumes worn at the Luxemburg and Tu'dlerics under the Directory and the Consulate, no attempts were made to restore the old Court coat, with its attendant wig, powder, aud Unlets tie pigeon, 1 which had been so distinctively the costume of tho Courtiers at Versailes. Napoleon 1., not without a good deal of friendly counsel from Talleyrand and other survivors of the old regime, settled a nev* Court costume. The illustrious parvenu was by no means averse from the wearing oi' breeches by his courtiers. He had himself the shapeliest of legs,_and even at St. Helena would sometimes ' appear at dinner in white shorts, silk

stockings, and buckles in his shoes. He preferred, however, that the coats of the attendants at his reception should blaze rather with gold embroidery than with elegant but unpretentious silk ' passementerie.' So the coats of his Senators, his Legislative Corps, his Council of State, and his other lacqueys were all bespattered with gold and spangles. At his fall the Bourbons brought back their beloved ' habit a la Francaise' powder 'alles de pigeon' and all. Even the ancestral pig-tail was sometimes seen to wag in the Faubourg St. Germain, and at the Pavilion Marsan. The cynical Parisians laughed at the antiquated Court suits of the returned ' e'tnigres ' and nick-named them ' Voltigeurs of Louis XVI.' The. coats of' antique shape' justcontrived to linger through the Restoration; but Court coat and Court breeches and stockings seem to have died the death during the reign of Louis Philippe. ' The elder branch,' the Citizen King is reported to have said,' wrote the culotte ;' the Republic was sansculotte;' but the younger branch wears trousers.' Pantaloons, with a stripe of gold down the outside seams, were supposed to be the golden mean between Legitimist punctilio and Democratic licence. Then came the Revolution of February, 1848, which unceremoniously tore the gold stripes off the trousers of officiality. Napoleon 111. reintroduced courtly breeches of his uncle's pattern ; but the ' culotte court' vanished in 1870, together with the Gent Gardes and other imperial pomps and vanities. There can scarcely be said to be any Court of France at present; and when a reception is given at the Elysee, although the diplomatists may appear, if they like, in ' grand costume,' and naval and military officers may wear the uniform of their ranks, there is between the attire of President Carnot and his guests no greater differonce than exists in the various grades of the insignia of the Legion of Honor which some of the company may be entitled to wear. On the whole, the prospects of Court breeches thorughout the world do not seem to be of the brightest deacriptun.—London DailyTelegraph.