THE SINS OF FASHION.

Southland Times, Issue 17345, 16 May 1913, Page 3

THE SINS OF FASHION.

WHEN IT SHOULD BE DEFIED. THE RIGHT OF ORIGINALITY. (From Our Lady Correspondent ). LONDON. April 2. "The Times" has taken up the subject of fashions and their futility and more sinful attitudes; and when "The Times” takes' a thin# up it takes it up as a solemn subject worthy its solemn consideration and judgment. And. as might be expected, quite a good deal can be said against fashion, according to the leader writer on "The Times." and very little in favour. With the last not all women will be in accord and there is no need that they should—there ( is a lot to be said for some sort of fashion as there, is much to be said for the law that is occasionally the "h’ass" that Bumble described it and generally an excellent fashion to be obeyed. Fashions must originally have constituted themselves, or been Instituted as laws of dress. One might not dispense with dress in polite society nor dress exactly ns on© chose, thin clothes were for summer and warm for winter use was it on such - lines that we started what has occasionally’ developed into good art and too often into very bad art ? The possibilities of dress no one who has studied • the subject could doubt when the defects of a short or 100 long neck can be remedied by daintiness and thought in collar, ■when height that is not can be assumed by the cut of a costume, when gawkiness can be toned down if not to grace then to inconspicuousness by the colour, quality and description of gowns and hats worn, and when every good point can be accentuated by attention to this important affair of suitable dressing. The ideal would surely be greater simplicity in dress, as in so many other things, but in dress particularly, because then the essential of all good dressing would have the chance of expression, apparently sedulously strangled now, by fashionable dressmakers, vix., personality. Without this any woman is Amt an echo, a fashion-plate, with it and a nice appreciation of its importance, she may always be worth attention. , "The Times" orator rails' at our long skirts with a fine masculine ignorance of the kindly way in which those same accessories add to our height, diminish our stoutness, impart grace, hide any defects of feet and ankles, etc. "The norm," he persists, "exists in the dress of voung girls, at least of those who are well dressed. Their clothes -ate never subjected to purely abstract designs; they do not disguise humanity, but adorn it. And it is also worth , remarking that their dress is proportioned differently in its main divisions from the dress of adult women** (their figures are also different, though he does not recognise this). ~ • _ . And of our long skirts which, it must be acknowledged, do divide us into unequal parts, “Women will never be content with failure, and, until they shorten their, skirts, they will never escape from it. . Success is to be won only on conditions they will not accept. But perhaps, after all, they prefer an impossible problem, with the incessant experiments which it entails; and that may be the real reason why, whatever else may happen, skirts are never shortened." THE HARMLESS COAT AND SKIRT. A good deal could be said against coats and skirts that is nob for coats and skirts undoubtedly atoned for many of the fashions that preceded them. One of their excellences is that the woman- wPio has not much time to devote to thoughts of dress cannot go very far wrong in them. They make for neatness and unobtrusiveness in what might be called their natural state, even if perfectly plain. At their best they can express originality as well as any fashions, though of all they are the most shamelessly imitative. and at their worst they sometimes subdue what might with advantage be emphasised, so that their sin is not very great. . Hobble skirts, when we are trying to think of artistic things, deserve no grace, for they sin against every admirable canon one can Imagine and stand out as having absolutely nothing to recommend them either in beauty or utility. But have men not been known to compress their capaciousness into waists, to wear ridiculously tight trousers and ludicrous hats in their adoration of fashion? This by the way. Two blacks do not make a white. “It may be.” says the oracle, "that when women wear huge hats and tight fitting skirts they are trying to look like moving flowers. At any rat© they are doing their best not to look like women.’’ No, alas, alas, they are doing their best to look like other women. And the other women started on their pilgrimage of absurdity, all too probably, at the behest of some French man designer, as in the instances of hobble and harem’ skirts. Why possibly no\ sensible women could say, though most of us have to acknowledge a certain inexplicable allegiance to convention and convention ordains that we shall neither lag behind when a fashion we like has given place to something we don’t, nor think out much in advance on our own account. But though we try hard to Ignore the fact it must sometimes be apparent to us that we were meant all to be individuals like no others and that fas-hion-fashions in dress actually!—is crushing and killing that beautiful realisation. It is an execrable pun to assert that women are specialists in little things, but it shall be said because it is their attention to the seemingly trivial in dress that they may still assert themselves and yet follow fashion sufficiently to live their lives in peace. Slavish imitation —even of good things —is not good in that it keeps the mind of the copy in a state of passivity. Everyone at least has a right to be herself —it ought to be regarded as a duty.