A MAN’S VIEW OF WOMAN’S DRESS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 9, 27 February 1892, Page 201

A MAN’S VIEW OF WOMAN’S DRESS.

We are not accustomed to look for enlightened views on woman's dress to the daily press, but occasionally we come across an article on the subject that has clearly grown out of a male brain and is sure to contain something startling. A correspondent a little time ago chose to inveigh against that one feature in women's dress that is most charming—its constant variety. We read : * It is not women's love of dress that is at fault, it is their constant change of fashion. Last year s style will not do this year; last season's bonnet or jacket is as dead for every well-regulated feminine mind as the clothing of the wem'en of ancient Egypt.’ Of course it is ; and we should like to know who regrets it, except a crank or two among the other sex. Without change there can be no improvement; even men's dress changes, though more slowly. ‘ Now, starting,' continues this writer, ‘ on the hypothesis that it is the business of a woman to look well after dress, why should she not come to adopt some normal type of a kind which suits the average woman '

‘ Most people who look over an illustrated paper or a fashion-plate of a generation ago will admit that women are much more tastefully dressed now than then. ‘ This is not a matter of an individual opinion, but a fact decided by a consensus of competent opinion. ‘ While many reforms are to be still desired, it is pretty certain that women's present dress is less heavy, more natural and shapely, better adapted to the general contour, freer and less restrained, throwing more into relief a pretty face or figure than was formerly the case.’ Here he seems to • give himself away.' If his idea of a normal type of dress is sound now, it must have been sound a decade, or a century or a thousand years ago. But, by his own showing, the present is the best, and has been the result of evolution, in other words, of constant change. But he tries to prove his position thus : ‘ The reason is that dress is, on the whole, simpler and more natural.

* Now when a normal type of dress is reached, combining grace and beauty with healthy qualities, why not stick to it, and rebel against extravagent caprices ? Consider the gain of such a course as compared with the method of chronic change. ‘ A vast deal of suffering in the world of labour, caused by capricious changes of fashion, would be obviated, and

money would be saved, while there would be the certainty of adnerence to an accepted beautiful design. ‘ The lives of women, now shortened by anxieties about the spring fashions, would be prolonged, and the temper of many millions of husbands would be greatly improved, for which very reasons nothing of the kind will probably be done.

* For if women cease to be capricious, cease to be fond of lightening the purse, and never cared to arouse the opposition of the despotic man, they would cease to be women—they would lose their essential attributes. ‘Even a Girton course does not eradicate these qualities, and at Newnham they have not yet exeluded fashion-books from the studies of the fair girl-graduates. ‘ Women will continue to charm and exasperate ns for a good long while to come.’ The real motive of the article comes out pretty clearly in this last extract.

The writer is a male person who thinks more of his own purse than of the anxieties he assumes to be a cause of suf fering to his wife and daughters. Why, what pleasure is there in life that is not accompanied by some little care and worry in attaining it ? And ask any woman if she would not rather have the anxiety along with the change of fashion than be stereotyped forever.