DRESS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6138, 26 March 1898, Page 3

DRESS.

[By Ladt Cook.] (Eureka Magazine.)

It is urged thafc ifc is an indecency for women to sit astride. I ask, why ? Until " Good Queen Anne" introduced the sidesaddle, the women of England always rode horseback astride like the men, as the women of many countries do to the present day. It is nonsense to connect immorality with either mode, as it is simply a matter of custom ; and when the novelty of seeing a woman astride has worn off, time will sanction both it and knickerbockers, as it has sanctioned so many other things. It is somewhat amusing, however, to hear women who appear at public functions in the most decollete manner — semi-nude, arms and shoulders, backs and breasts hare to all beholders — disparaging the modest woman who only displays, to the extent of a few inches, the shape of a pair of wellcovered legs. Ladies of position have long been accustomed to accompany their male friends to cover and moor shooting, habited in knickers and leggings, and little notice has been taken; but the adoption of similar garments by the cycling community is quite another thing, and requires police interference.

Mankind have been trying all kinds of clothing, possibly to discover a rational dress, and have not found the suitable one yet. We may still say, as Chaucer in the " Parson's tale," " Alas ! May not a man see as in our dales, the sipneful costlewe array of clothing, and namely in to moeh superfluitee, or elles in to disordinate scantnesse?" Among the superfluities was the " length of the foresaide gounes, trailing in the myre, on Jiors and eke on foot, as well of man as of woman, that all thilke trailing is veraily wasted, consumed, threadbare, and rotten, rather than it is geven to the poure."

The fashion of short and tight breeches " which rather exposed the wearer's nakedness than hid it," was banished from France by an edict of Charles V. The beaux of Elizabeth's reign, however, differed from those of Chaucer's and Charles's times. They stuffed their breeches with feathers, rags, and other light materials, until they were swollen to a huge circumference; and at the same time tho ladies wore large hooped farthingales; something like modern crinolines, so that " two lovers aside could I surely never have taken one another by the hand." In a print by Vertue, Lady Kunsdon, a leader of fashion, head's Elizabeth's procession to Lord Hunsdon's. Her "standing up wire ruff" rises above her head, her stays reach to her knees, and her farthingale encloses her " as in a capacious tub." Disraeli says .— " The amorous Sir Walter Raleigh must have found some of the Maids of Honour the most impregnable fortification his gallant spirit ever assailed." Old Stowe says of this reign, "in that timehe was held the greatest gallant that had the deepest ruff and longest rapier." We have seen an old French print of Adam and Eve in elaborate Eastern costumes, robed, jewelled and turbanned, although we are told our Biblical ancestors commenced with fig-leaves, and did not advance beyond " coats of skins." The graceful and Greekliko dresses of Anglo-Saxon times continued to linger long after the Conqueror. The conquest of France by the English introduced French fashions, and. these and other refinements continued to come to us at intervals from Italy and Holland also.