BERNHARDTS ART REVEALED IN HER PERFECT DRESSES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 7, 13 February 1892, Page 161

BERNHARDTS ART REVEALED IN HER PERFECT DRESSES.

GOWN' ES THE. w*A£S>KOBE OF THE FRENCH ACTRESS STTT»rET* AND TELEIE CHARM PISSECTEI? AT THE HAXT*S OF AX EXPERT.

ME. SARA BERNHARDTS stage •iressiits' is a charming pteduet of art and adds niucE so the enjoyment of her audience : bet ber dressing in private life is more interesting still. It is fall of lessons in beauty that every one -ran understand and should turn to aeeoant. It should rouse us to something like a sense of our foEy in persisting in wearing ugly eiothes. We are in great fortune to have a living

exemplar of she laws of art in dress- Sueh an Elusrrasion does nos cerar always in a generation. It is so rare, indeed, that one mar Eve a Life-time through without ever ’nein j reminded that dress ought to be the creation of art. ordinarily we consider it in one or two ways- We either submit itto the material roles of fashion, which impose oc us all sorts of fantasticalities, or else if we are strongminded, we rebel and carry the matter over into the world of reason, the moral world. And the difference between these two is the difference between capricious nonsense and ugliness, Neither side has the right of the matter. DRESS IN THE .ESTHETE DOMAIN. Dress property belongs in the sesthetie domain. It is true that it is a material necessity and that it most be subject to moral laws: but these two most be reconciled by art. Dress must be she product and creation of -stheri-c Laws, and there is no possibility of its bang beautiful by any other means. It is a strange thing that women should spend so tn net of their Eves in the effort to make dress add to their beauty without its ever occurring to them to study and apply the laws of art. To the average woman the proposition to do this would be so new as to be hardly understood. She has a vague idea that aesthetic dress means a Kate Greenaway gown or a Roman toga. Even actresses- whose business it is to be well dressed, exhibit wardrobes so hopeless from the art standpoint as to be on a par in quality with these bad pictures which are rejected from the exhibitions. In ine, the public in general is so far from a true understanding of the matter that even those of us who deem ourselves quaEned to be oracular about it content ourselves mostly with extolling the Greek, and discussing the wisdom of a return to the popular, all of wtsiefc is mere affectation. BERNHARDT'S AKTt'TIC EFFECTS. But Mme. Bernhardt knows that beauty cannot be produced in dress any more than it an on a canvas, except by the eternal laws of art, ani this is why her results are wortn study. Try to i mag-ine dressing, which is on a par in —-tactic value with—say. a painting by Greuze, and you will have some ide* of the quality of her product in this direction. There is that in her meet indifferent costume which rivets the eye and delights the sense. It is bewilderingiy effective and apparently with the siigh test of means. That there ean be good dressing in which fashion has no voice or inffuence is hard for the fashion ridden world to understand. Bat let us analyse Bernhardt's dress and see by what means its beauty is produced. This is the way it is done : HER LAW OF PETE'S. In the first place she has assumed mat the Creator ran make a more beautiful form than the dressmaker can. This is her ground principle or starting point. No garment is permitted to alter or disguise the shape of her igure. The corset she does not wear either on the stage or off: the conventional corseted waist is as far from suggesting Mme. -Sara's form as a wheelbarrow is. And just here an interesting observation is to be made. The dress reformers also have discarded the corset, but the ■inference between theirs and Mme, Sara's results is very great, and it lies in this :—While she has substituted art for fashion and evolved a dress in harmony with the nature form, they have retained the conventional forms of fashion, modified and uglihed. An example will make this clearer. The plain bosque, with its darts and back side forms, is the f*m d« wtutaaa — I speak advisedly—of fashkmabie dress. Thu waist, which was designed to wear over the corse; and which fits the eoreet and not the ngure, this abomination is persisted in by the reformers. Bat Bernhardt's ideal of form is that of the artists. and the artist's is that of per

feeted nature, and this waist, therefore, has no place in her wardrobe. THE LAW OF FOLD CENTRE-. Again, the •roustruction of her garment obeys absolutely the law of fold centres, which I have formulated elsewhere as follows :—Folds may legitimately be fastened only where, by the form of rhe body, they would be naturally gathered together. Wherever the body offers support to rhe weight of ttse garments there is a natural fold centre. The point.- furnished by nature for suspending the garments are the shoulders and hips : therefore to attain the maximum beauty in its hanging the garment must have ah its parts depend, or appear to depend, from these two sources, bat principally from the shoulders, as they, from their position and form offer the principal resistance to gravity. Bernhardt's dress hangs entirely from the shoulders. Her gowns are composed of a yoke, to which a skirt is gathered, precisely like a child’s gown, and confined ar the waist with girdles. Following is a description in detail of some of the ■roetumes in her private wardrobe ar this moment in blbxhaedt- wardrobe. A house dress is’of brown and white hairline stripe shot silk, gathered into a rounded yoke of brown velvet. Brown velvet sleeves, fall to below the elbow, over close sleeves of

the silk. The skirt is simply hemmed. This slip is eoa fine! at the waist with two silver girdles, one of them loose and drooping in front. A charming g>:>wu is entirely of black velvet. The skirt is attached to a heart shaped yoke. These yokes simply roand up to the top of the shoalder. instead of ending in the armbole. The yoke and mnttonleg sleeves are embroidered with small stars of gold bullioa and thread. It is in the back—that is to say. it fits clo»e to the bottom of the waist, and it is fastened by a lacing behind. I: is confined by gold belts. Another has the skirt of brown velvet. Madan e makes great use of velvet. The yoke and sleeves are of silk, of a lighter fawn colour, and are richly embroidered with gold and silks. It is fastened under the arm. Foe this gown there is a long tan eoloarei eloak of soft camel s "hair, sp»rinkled over with tufted dakea of a deeper brown. Also a Russian sable boa an-i a large hat or tan colourei felt, faced on the under side with felt and trimmed with black ostrich feathers. The large hat is set somewhat back on the bead. Madame wears mostly large bats, she understands that a small hat. unless it fits like a cap, merely changes the -hate of the bead, but that a large hat framethe face.

SILK ASt» VELVET. Still anotaer is of soft < >ttoman silk of a rediisc violet colour. The yoke and sleeves are of velvet, of the same colour, riehly jewelled in an all over pattern. I: has a high, rolling collar. A bAnd of velvet borders the «kirt. T « complete this costume is a velvet eloak of the same colour, richly bordered with bands of otter-, also a hat of black loi-ie-d with violets and pink Castilian roses. The sleeves of these gowns are of tae mutton leg order, very full ar the top and wrinkled along tae arm. and very long, covering well the wrist. Also the skirt- are long, training somewhat behind, and often so long :n front that one wonders how she ean walk in then*. Her el-xaks also refer their support to the shoulders, an no fitted back seams of hideous convex curves are mappe-i •out upon them. A characteristic one is of black plush, which hangs easily from a yoke of solid black passementerie, and is furnished with sleeves that are very fall about the shoulders. }'<KETs IS HEE PETTUXiaTS. - It may be of interest in this day of bell skirts to know how Madame rear-age- about pockets " e has none in her gown, but if you watch for a little you may see her calmly an-i ieiiberateiy raise her outer skirt and craw .oat her han ike'-hief from a pocket in her satin pettieoat Madame’s use oi this same tiny handkerchief is worth while noting by the way. In her fingers it seems to attain nervo - force and become a deb-rate oriie texture as she touches :: lightly to her hair and face, and then rolls it up out of sigh: in her pa.’tn. I: might see:., to one who has n-.-t seen Bernhardt in the that these garments would appear issosw-r. They do not in the least. Nothing could be more elegant. Much of this success, however, depends on the underdresstag. which is compact and fine. In place of a corse: she wear- either a stitebed waist, without bones or cords, or else two simply stitched bands, one below the other. With BI made ■ ordinary skirts and clumsy waists these gowns would te impossible. SHE EX7--V- FREE MOVEMENTS. When cress hinders the free movement of even one muscle it injures beauty to that extent. T- -~ .-X--..- be otherwise No part of Bernhardt’s cress is allowed interfere witn the freest movement, and the waist muscles are as mucrconsidered as any. This makes possible a kind of eau’.y which ordinary cress forbids—l mean the beauty of grace Grace is beauty of motion. You may practise Delsarte tildoomsday and it will be of small avail if you persist in a dress that limits movement. When will women undetstand that couiplexioc does not exetstirate the whole of beauty 1 Hear what Maiame rrora herself says on this point, -he is speaking of stage requisites, bat the remarks are as applicable to private life ‘Facial beauty, she says, ‘is unessential. The face needs absolutely but two things—a Lovely expression anc gx>i teeth. Good teeth are necessary to clear enuncianon, and the mouth should be sightly when opened. Toe eyes must be expressive, the look out of her face must be attractive, the smile have imagination : in a word, the face must denote character. ’ All this means that beauty is not an attribute soleiy of tae face. It should irradiate the whole body and cress shoal i aid its expression. But when dress displays only the crude, vulgar design oi some ignorant dressmaker, it is a un i ranee and disguise to beauty. Moreover, character should not be confined to the face. It may be expressed in the whole body if the dress is such as to permit it. BERNHARDT - i-EA- - X LRE—. In a desultory eonversatiou Bernhardt recently expressed herself on dress as fellows : — • Whatever you do, dress becomingly. That is my rule. See that what you wear suits you—your re-son. your tn dividuality. Make your costume to suit yon, not yourself to s-it your costume. Ah, madanse! what a blow at fashion. • It is wise economy t-- have one’s clothes made by the very best modistes who are themselves artists in their own special line. But it is not wise to tely upon the uniform judgment of one person, or to advocate eternally the skii: of a certain few M. Worth and others, are yoa meat: there ’ ■ Now, talent is always making itself felt, and from the individuality of some one who sees yoa for the first time yoa may get valuable hints and fresh suggestions. ‘ It does not take a good eostamer long to -ee and leam just what you need, but if you cling to him monotonously you will always bear the same stamp.’ And yet. in spite of this advice, madame designs her own costumes, down to the smallest detaiL HEE STA'.E DREs-E-. It is quite another aspect of Bernhardt's skill in dress taat presents itself at the theatre. Wherever the historical exigencies of the piece permit there her costume is recognise-: as an expression of contemporaneous French art, just asurely as are the canvases of F>e Neuville, Genome and Bonnat. The subtlest art knowledge pervades it. Sae is an artist always aefore she is an actress, and herein lies much of her power. Where others grasp merely the technique of our p-rofessi->n, she nas taken every branch of esthetics to be her province. Who can recall the dress she wears as Jeanne d‘ Are a: D>memy without knowing this ' Le Page himself did not treat tae subject with more tender skill in colour and form. The rough wool skirt of light dax brown : the laced bodice of blue over the high chemise of white ; the hair repeating the brown above, and the white of tae waist echoed below in the petticoat drop-p-ing irregularly below the skirt—all this is a- ja taiater would lay out his col-mrs an-i no ietail of composition that the painter woul-t observe is forgotten. Note the care taken with the irregular lacing of the bodiee that the hues shad fall into harmony with other lines of the composition, and how the blue strings are broken by the white ones of the chemise falling across them, just as the painter would take care to break them. All the quality required for value in a picture is there, though it is to last for bat a minute. HEE GIRDLES CHAR tCTERI-TK. Mme. Bernhardt's girdles are a characteristic feature • her dress and shoul-i have a wor>i of co-nmeot. She weartwo—one passing boriiontally around the waist, and the other loose and iroop-ing in front. It is not caprice that is shown in these belts, but a knowledge of beauty The first belt moulds itself to the cross section of the l«dv and show s

all the subtleties of curvature it passes over, and the drooping one emphasizes the hips and confines the garment to the Ixxly below the waist line in front.. The first carries the eve round, the second refers to the hips as points of suppoit. Beautiful as Bernhardt’s dress is, it would be as great a mistake for us all to copy it as it is for one painter to imitate another. We should not copy the masters, but study them, and learn how to express ourselves. Could we predict the day when every woman would be known by the creation of her dress, as the painter is known by his canvas : when she would eschew fashion and with sthetic knowledge leatn to express herself, we might look to a future filled with a beauty we have never yet seen—a future in which an infinite amount of energy now wasted will be diverted and utilized. To realise this future we need only to be convinced of its possibility, and this Mme. Bernhardt has proved to us. Ada Bache-Cone.