FASHIONS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 181, 26 June 1862, Page 6

FASHIONS.

(Saturday Review)

The Fashion ot this Avorld, Aye are told, passeth away. Times change, empires fall, dresses are altered. The first htginning of all reflective philosophy i§ to dwell on the mutability and the worthlessness of earthly things In our day, the reflection lias become hackneyed. We have played and sported Avith the thought that England may s>omc day he a Av.iste aud London in ruins, < till change no longer seems something opcHinposmg. It is only in a geneial •way that we accept as a truth that the things (that ans will not be Partly this is because, if me take |tWj mutability of things in its a\ idest *cnse,'i^seergs nf't to concern us much. If the Aluiver^g'iSijieashable, that is only interesting as ji phil6sqph,ie truth or a. philosophic guess. We .could scarcely y in our most hopeful mood, exp ct <to survive tho general frame of things. But ithere ia-also another rea'sbh'Why Aye do npt iecl &8 much impressed with' cliange juj. might be looked for. We cannot tell exactly .what things are likely to ciiange, or when, or how. Many things that are supposed likely to last soon fade

off, and others that appear the creatures of the j hour last on and on. Some of those avlio have j worked hardest and longest for fame, and Avere thought likely to secure it, are now forgotten or passing rapidly out of memory, Avhilc a happy ehanct; has given others a place iv the honor of posterity, although they wero held by their con temporaries to have done very little to deserve it. Southey, wiio liyetl tlie life of a laborious hermit among tho books that were to be the basis of his fame, hs an almost unknown author to modern England Avhile Goldsmith is still a favorite. There are many little things as to Avhich we cannot be sure that what seems the fashion of au hour Avill soon die off. We cannot always console ourselves with thinking that every bore has its day. A fashion we may be inclined to dislike or despise, may appeal strongly to some set of feelings or interests, and may be preserved long after it has been thought doomed. There are many matters as to which, it is not at all safe to guess that the change that looks so obvious and near is likely to show itself so jn.

Take, for instance, crinoline. If ever a fashion ought to have d.'c.l out under laughter and mockery of all sorts, it is the custom of making dresses stick out by artificial means. Punch has • lived on it in tlie dull season for years. The shops are full of prints portrayiug all the difficulties in Avhicii 'the weavers of crinoline and hoops are placed. It is wonderful Avhat class of persons find the prints worth purchasing-, but as they are produced in abuudauce somebody must, buy .them. Probably it is the same set of people Avho buy tobacco jars shaped like a lady, aud so ' contrived that the lady lifts up, and her petticoats are found to be full of birds-eye. Then there have beeu plenty of excellent moral reasons urged' against trlnoline.' It makes dress very expcusiA-e, and it puffs up the female mind with unnecessary vanity. Moralists always hope that the female mind will cease to bo vain if the right thing is dona or feft undone. The fashion ha 3 also been .subjected to the severest of all trials—that of being vulgarised. There is a story of a Spanish Minister who wished to stop the practice of wearing large slouched hats in-Madrid. I-Io thought that a.smaller and more open article would bo more couveuieut to the police. An edict was issued that the slouched hats should be discontinued. Madrid was in arms, aud the attachment to these shady-coverings was declared to be unalterable. The cunning Minister. Avas not to be beaten. He ordered the hangmen and other villauous officials to walk up and down the principal streets, wearing tho largest and most conspicuous of all possible slouched bats. This was successful, aud rather than dress as hangmen dressed, decent, people wore a different sort of hat. Much the same experiment has been tried in England Avith crinoline. It has been displayed in the most conspicuous proportions, and the most glaring manner, by those women who are to virtuous females what hangmen are to respectable grocers and butchers. But in England the effect has been very different from what happened at Madrid. This .appropriation of crinoline has rather increased than diminished the fury" ot* the fashion. Hypoerisv, a vice that has almost died out, was said by Rochefoucauld to ba the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Imitation is now the tribute that virtue pays to vice. But crinoline has also stood a more rigorous test, for ifc has descended to the kitchen, aud mistresses look with a jealous eye on the mimierv of their maids. It certainly is a wonderful sight to see a slatternly girl strip herself in order to do a door step, and-then resume her iron cage Avhen the hour that may bring the butcher-boy has arrived. Why is it that crinoline has survived all these dangers, and that, although its proportions are. not quite so outrageous, it is still the fashion, and likely to keep so? Simply because—if, at least, Aye speak of crinoline proper, -and not of the cage and hoop abominations—it is really becoming. The female form is much more graceful when it does not appear to go sheer . down, like Mrs Noah in a cheap Ark. Crinoline is vexatious lyid expensive, and occasionally absurd; but it does effect something that is wanted. Of course, the fashion Avill he altered in a hundred Avays, and the mechanical ingenuity of tlie human mind will hit on a vast series of improvements in the apparatus. But to the end of time i Avomen must either dress sheer down or stick out. The degree of protection is a matter of detail, hut in principle they must do one or "the other. There is no more reason Avhy, lurring once learnt to stick out, they should return to dressing sheer down, than why Aye should all return to our ancestors' practice of painting the body Avith Avoad. Photography, again, is a fashion that perhaps may last longer than all the nuisances it entails might-lead one to expect. It certainly brings nuisances Avith it that may make the most patient man wish the sun had never been put to this horrible purpose. Sitting to a photographer is not quite so had as going to a deutist, but it is something near it. In the first place, the leading photographers make appointments or grant a. sitting as if they were high Government officials giving away clerks' places to troublesome but deserA-ing people. Then the photographer himself is a trial. Probably he finds his sitters bores, and he would make a much less lucrative thing of it if he allowed the sitter and the sitter's friends to interfere. Still it is a nuisance for a lady to he carried off from her husbaud or other male person in charge, aud be treated by a smirking fifth-rate artist for half-an-hour as something between a convict and a baby. In the case more • especially of ■ young girls, Aye must add that' thi3 system of separate sittings is something much Avorse than a nuisance, and ought to -"be resolutely put down. Then the eminent photographer who thinks himself sure of his business is the most audacious of men. There is nothing he will not say to put doAvn criticism and inquiry. A lady went lately to he taken with a little girl. Tlie. money was paid,. find in about a week or ten days the thing Avas pronounced to be ready. The lady Avas all very Avell, and so was the upper part of the little girl's figure, but below the petticoat she shaded off into two faint wavy columns like the reflection of trees in water. Remonstrance Avas made, and the eminent photographer had the assurance to say that artists had now given up putting in legs. Then a epiiet, unoffending man is sometimes overwhelmed wilh Avhat seems to him the joke and mockery of the attitude in Avhich, under the eminent photographer's directions, he is offered to his friends. A gentleman of a solid, humdrum appearance, with only that sort of romance about him Avhich women cannot detect, was recently persuaded to sit. He sat, and the eminent photographer did his best. But it was a failure, and two or three more sittings came off in vain. At last the eminent photographer expressed himself much pleased. By the judicious introduction of a background, and" a few objects being placed so as to break the stiffness, success had been achieved; and this is Avhat the photograph presented. The unfortunate man Avas standing with his back to theLago di Garda. He was placed on the top of a grand marble staircase, near a splendid balustrade. In one hand he held a very new borrowed silk umbrella, and he was supported on the other side by a friend's hat. It is bad enough to be depicted in this way, but the mere being depicted is a very small portion of the Avhole business. After the photographs are sent home comes the Avorry for them. There is some sort of pleasure in giving them to very near • relative's and-very dear friends. We all, like to fancy that there are a chosen few, who really care to ha\ c a likeness of us, although it does represent us bareheaded, and surveying a new hat on the banks of an Italian lake. But. the demand for photographs is not limited to relations or fiicnds. It is scarcely limited to. acquaintances, Any one who has ever "seen you, or has seen any body that has >.een you, or knoAvs any one that saa s he has seen a; person who thought he has seen you, considers himself entitled to ask you for your photograph, and to make you pay eighteenpence in order to comply Avith the demand. There is no compliment in it. The claimant does not care about yoii or your likeness in the least. But he or she has got a photograph book, and as it n ust he filled, you are invited to act as a padding to that volume, and to fill a vacant space bctAA-ecn Prince Max of Hesse Darmstadt and the amiable owner's third brother, as lie appears in the comic costume of a navvie. It is not even grown up people only Avho ask in this preposterous Avay for photographs. Children and babies have got their photograph books, and say that really they" must have your likeness. They -protest they will not Ichoav what to do with their miserable young lives unless you consent to pay the eighteen-pence for them and figure in their

collection. This is tcrriiK People-who are not I accustomed to them do not 'generally much care for infants in arms, hut those precious"' darlings will rise in estimation now. They may have an aAvkward habit ot' bending suddenly ii the back, as if they were made of soft leather, but tit any rate they cannot possibly ask for your photograph. We do not for a moment dream that the fashion of photograph eollectiug will die out. In the first place, tho gain of having cheap portraits of friends is so great, that there is a solid advantage in photographs Avliieh Avould counterbalance a great masy nuisances of a very serious sort. And then, the collections, Avhen made, are very useful. Tiiey supply a fund of talk to people avlio have, nothing to say. Everyone can find something to remark about a collection of photographs. Either they do not know the people represented in it, or they do know them, or they wonder whether they know t!'iem. Then, it ihey know them, they can say they are like or unlike; or they can payadroit compliments and make acceptable remarks on the photographs most cherished by the collector ; or they can gratify a little quiet malice, and say that they never could have believed so very unfavorable TflikeiieVs is a true one, and yet everyone knows the sun must be right. It is this • fund of easy small talk which will be the real foundation of the permanent success of photography as a fashion. It might easily huve happened that photograph books Avould have shared the fate of albums. Thirty years ago, young ladies used to keep albums, and people used to be decoyed or frightened into writing in them. Authors of all size-s and degrees of reputation were entreated lo add their mite. Charles Lamb's letters, for example, are full of references to the albums he had been writing in. But the Ave.ik point of albums was that, where they Averenot occupied by magnificent water-colour representations of perfectly round roses in the fullest bloom, they Avere too intellectual. People in an ordinary drawing-room think there <is a sort of plot to find them out if any demand is made on their iutelect; and to Avrite verses, or even to copy correctly a piece of poetry out of a standard author, is dangerous and embarrassing.- It is true that writers in allums Avere occasionally allowed to get offby writing out in their best hand one of the very -poorest and host known riddles they could recollect, such as '- Why is Athens like the wick of a candle ?'? But even this is precarious, for the answer has to be remembered and understood. In photographs all is plain sailing. All that has to be done is to make gossiping remarks about other people, and this is a duty to which the most timid intellects feel competent.

Photographs are, then, a fashion ; but it is possible they may be Avhat, considering the mutability of "human things, deserves to be called a permanent fashion, because they tend to supply a Avant that will always-be felt. It is the same with ladies' novels and oth.e.- records of the inner life and language of young Avonien. This species of composition is a fashion of the day. Haifa century ago the dear creatures either had no'self-, inquiring, dreamy lifc-shadowings, or else .they kept them locked up. Now printers can hardly print fast enough to keep pace Avith all the outpourings of lady noA-elists. The supply is like that of an Artesian well—it is perennial and overflowing. We venture to say that if .-my one offered a small prize for a tale of Avoman's feelings, there would be at least five thousand competitors. It is a fashion that we do not take much interest in ; but we admit that it gives something that was Avanted. Most women have a latent gush in them ; and if the gush does not flow out in marriage, it gladly finds a vent in print. As long as there are single women with unrequited feelings, or married women who can make this sort of production pay, and as long as printing is cheap, so long Avill the lady's novel last. Perhaps it Avill improve, but anyhow it ivill go on. There are other fashions," as to Avhich it is more difficult to guess whether they will last or not. Morning calls, for example, seemed a deep-rooted habit of English society, and yet they are almost a thing of the past. Will sermons go too? We do not mean the discourses of a Christian minister who has something to say, and says it as, aud Avhen he he thinks it ought to be said. Such discourses Arill, Aye are sure, go on till the tongue of man ceases to he heard on earth. But Avill the ordinary halt-hour cut and ( dry discourse, iii Avhich neither the preacher nor the congregation pretend to take the slightest interest, go on in England? Very likely it may; for it serves some objects, though not very high ones. And if it is objected that Aye cannot belieA-e our posterity will always stand -what does, not please or profit them,-the answer is, that Aye stand, the sermon, and we stand being submerged under confluent ivaves of crinoline at dinner, and Aye stand audacious children squeezing out our photographs from us. And if Aye can stand all this, Avhy should not others? There must be some burdens that are always borne, and some fashions that do not pass away.