Ladies’ Dress in London.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7267, 20 July 1893, Page 2

Ladies’ Dress in London.

A writer in the World, who professed to be foreigner,- set down bis impressions of English ladies’ and gentlemen’s dress and manners, as be observed their at one of the Society Shows,—Private View Day at the Boyal Academy. He says :

I believe I am correct in supposing that, at these shows, one gazes at representatives of the entire upper and middle class British public, including dressmakers in much variety. I think, therefore, that the alien spectator, desirous to extend bis experiences and improve bis judgment, finds there an excellent opportunity of inspecting the British woman. She comes with the express purpose of offering herself to public c mtemplalion ; as a member of the public 1 thanked her and contemplated. I am well within the fact when 1 assert that, at 4.30, half the women present had new clothes on, prepared specially for the day. I had, therefore, the privilege of viewing them in what they considered to be their best aspect. r lhat being so, I mourn. 'The British woman, regarded as a national product, presents, not unfrequeutly, the finest type of the raw material of woman which Europe raises ; but, alas! the manufacturing treatment which should work up that material into a finished result is unknown to her. I can teli you at once, without a second of hesitation, the reason of her failure; it is that, nationally, and excluding rare exceptions, she can neither move gracefully, nor wear her clothes as if they were part of her. To see the beauties of England sitting motionless in boxes at the opera is like a vision of goddesses, because they are chained to their chairs, and are unable, for the moment, to destroy the effect of their magnificence of head by their unakilfulness of bodyj bat when the same women are in movement the goddesses fall off their pedestals, and become English women, 1 declare, speaking as a cosmopolitan enthusiast in all the forms of loveliness, that your countrywomen are wasting the noblest natural gifts because they don’t know how to walk I ur use their arms, and because they \ pile on exaggerated clothes, which, whatever : they may think, are not such as are being worn in Paris, or which, if they really, came from thence, have changed their character in the crossing. Your England ought to be the triumphant possessor of the noblest race of women that Europe can show ; you haven’t it, because the women destroy themselves by incapacity J saw that, for the hundredth time, on Friday, and 1 saw it with the sorrow of an artist in women lamenting over wasted opportunities.

An H now comes the strangest detail of the story, ihe men ! Blow can it possibly be that, if the women fail to u t.rly (from the philosophically universal, though absolutely conventional, point of view of what the modern woman's aspect oug it to be), your men can approach so nearly to perfection from the self same point of view F They possess nearly all the external qualities and capacities in which, to the foreign eye, the women are so glaringly insufficient, They are full of respectful caim, are not ungainly j they carry their clothes with ease, and tuning tham all round they are thorough men. The realise the actual ideal of a gentleman just as completely as the Parieienne of forty years ago offered the perfect model of the lady of her time. At thig moment, from the action of causes which I have neither time nor space to set forth, there is nowhere a rational representative of the perfect woman. The French have fallen from the elevai ion which they once occupied, and no one else has become competent enough to i eeizo the vacant height Internation oomparrison points straight to the English as the raoe best qualified by physical f ifta to vise, and ihe merits of their men prqve conclusively that there is in tbg blood 00 inherent unfitness fof gysqt progress But the women need a model; they need to be educated to admire grace. Where nature has done so much, it is indeed regrettable, speaking in the worldwide sense and disregarding insula? ignosraac« t that art should do go httia, 1