FOLLIES OF FASHION.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2760, 22 March 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

FOLLIES OF FASHION.

Tub weddiug dress of Marie da M.ulie was "11 ells in length, and embroidered with fair gold lilies, and in it Miric shone like unto the sun among the cloiul3." The same Queen wore, at the baptism of her son, afterwards Louis XIII., a gown which was embroidered with .'>5,000 pearls and 3,000 diamonds. For the same ceremony the Marshal de Ba3sompierre ordered half a centner of pearls to adorn his dress. When " our Good Queen Bess" received the French Ambassador, Biron, in audience, she wore a robe at which 100 persona had worked for three weeks. Under Henry 111, of France, a peculiar custom was rife; young gentlemen when they bought silk stockings, used to entreat the beauties they adored to consecrate those articles of attire by wearing them for a day, before they were put on |by their owners. It was Henry IV. who introduced masks, which were used for the purposo of protecting the face from the influences of the wind, the sun, or the rain. The custom remains to this day iu the villages of the Riesengebirgo mountains, where the children all go about masked, in the winter, to protect their faces from cold. Even in the 17th century, Paris was looked upon as the moniteur iks modes, and, as fashion-books had not then been invented, ladies used to send there regularly for little dolls, correctly costumed ; and to send their tailors thero to study the style of dress in vogue, In the last century, ladies used to wear on their heads gigantic pyramids of hair, flowers, and feathers. The excrescences called toumures which lisvc just reluctantly g<£(p to their grave, used to be worn in The reign of Francis 11. (the lGth century); and are «t.iU fashionable in Japan, where however, they are worn outside the di'cs--.