NATIONAL DRESS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9955, 3 April 1895, Page 3

NATIONAL DRESS.

She was a phantom of delight when first she gleamed upon my fighr. 16 wa» | In busy Princes-street, nt or abont high noon, and every human creituro nilhln range of the phenomenon stood at gaze. Never before had I beheld her save In photographs or In Punch; here at last was the real thine;— the New Woman in her Kational Dress. And very cool and comfortable she looked. Her legs were as sharply defined as a Cochin rooster's, with abont the snme nnionnt of fluffy reserve in the upper reaches. She did not wear petticoats, and the garment, the wore instead of petticoats, whatever it was. stopped short of her knees. She was dressed for the dog days, and could hardly have been better ventilated except io a bathing gown. She was neatly gloved, carried n parasol, and tripped along the pivement with the airy grace of a ballet dancer. Other indiciiions of sex I saw norie ; the gait, the gloves, nnd the parasol, these were all. The phenomenon betrayed no consciousness of the interest it excited and the pleasure it conferred ; it appeared to be engaged in shopping. After this ocular observation I understood clearly for the first time why ths "rational dress" movement can never succeed. As long as a woman is still yonne, her ankle shapely, her figure slim, and the curve of her waist the line of beauty, she may adventure herself In knickers and lohr stockings. Twenty years later, when she has become the mother of six, she will be thankful for the merciful concealments of flowing draperies. It is not every woman that is tall and stately, that has a neat instep nnd a slender woiat, and is never more than five-and-twenty. There are women who are fat, fair, and forty, and there are some who are even older than that. There are dumpy women and ntnmpy women, and amongst them are some of tho best women in the world. The only dress for women that can be cslled rational Is the dress that snits all women equally, and that is the skirt nnd petticoat — which add grace to the maiden, confer dignity on the matron, and cover with a decent vesture the infirmities of age. Imagine any really ancient dame of your acquaintance in "rational dress" ! Depend upon it the wisdom of so many oges and so many nations is not going to bs set aside by the whimsies of a few feather-headed faddists. The skirt and petticoat will endure as long as women are women.