BARRISTERS’ BLACK GOWNS

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 December 1934, Page 3

BARRISTERS’ BLACK GOWNS

WOMEN'S BUTTONS MYSTERY. LONDON, November 4. The reason why barristers wear black gowns and why many other antiquated sartorial eccentricities still persist was humorously explained yesterday by Mr. Wilfrid Mark Webb, the biologist, who is secretary of the Selborne Society. Lecturing at the Horniman Museum on conservatism in clothes, Mr. Webb said the idea that we were fickle in our dress fashions was a slander. “We are all horribly conservative in the matter of clothes,” he said, “and when we once have a thing, we like to keep it whether there is a real reason for it or not, just as we climr to our appendix, the biological vestige of days when we were vegetarians, like rabbits.” “That was why nuns and sisters of mercy wore three head-dresses and the silk-hatted city man wore a useless ribbon round his head gear,” he went on. The latter was a relic of the fillet with which ' women 4,000 years ago bound a loose fabric around their heads.

WHY “COXCOMBS?” The Knights of the Garter used to wear a short cape and hood, known as a chaperon. After dining not wisely but. very well, the dandies of a later day often found difficulty ia donning their red chaperons. So they put them on like a wet towel, flopping over their faces, and earned the title of “coxcombs.” Barristers still wore the chaperon attached to the back of their gowns, and they wore black gowns because they went into mourning for Queen Anne. Quscn Anne was still dead, so they kept on mourning. Mr. Webb found the investigation of the cockade a worry. “I wrote to the Lord Chamberlain as to whose servants are entitled to use it,” he said. “I was informed, most courteously, that it was entirely a matter for the Herald’s College. So I wrote to them, and wa« told, aam'n most courteously, that it was entirely a 1 matter for the Lord Chamtjeiwiin. ’ (Laughter). Tlie busby of the Hussar was the result of Army officers’ jealousy. It was originally a cloth cap with a narrow edging of fur worn by Hungarian mercenaries in the British Army. The uniform of tho soldiers was then in accordance with the colonel’s purse. One colonel put on 2 inches of fur, another 4, and so on, till it was all fur but the top. The clocks of ladies’ hose were put on to hide the gusset, seams when I the stockings were of cloth. They 1 remained, because tho perforated ! clock gave the artistic effect of tati toeing without the pain, and could be [ lengthened or shortened to suit the i length of skirts.

That the soldier wears many buttons on his sleeves to prevent the “Tommies” using them as handkerchiefs was another slander. They were there as vestiges of sleeves so tight, that they had to be unbuttoned before the coat, came off. A man’s coat buttons were on the right side because once this gave him easy access to his dagger. Bin why the buttons on a woman’s dress were on the left side, Mr. Webb confessed, remains a mystery.