THE DRESS.
We shall consider the dress, by which we mean, simply, the upper
garment worn within doors, as consisting of three parts--the sleeve,
the body, and the skirt.
The sleeve has changed its form as frequently as any part of our
habiliments: sometimes it reached to the wrist, sometimes to a short
distance below the shoulder. Sometimes it was tight to the arm;
sometimes it fell in voluminous folds to the hands; now it was widest
at the top, then widest at the bottom. To large sleeves themselves
there is no objection, in a pictorial point of view, provided that
their point of junction with the shoulder is so conspicuous that they
do not add to the apparent width of the body in this part. The lines
of the sleeves should be flowing; and they are much more graceful when
they are widest in the lower part, especially when so open as to
display to advantage the beautiful form of the wrist and fore-arm. In
this way, they partake of the pyramid, while the inelegant gigot
sleeve, which for so long a period enjoyed the favor of the ladies,
presents the form of a cone reverted, and is obviously out of place in
the human figure. When the large sleeve, supported by canes or
whalebones, forms a continuous line with the shoulder, it gives
an unnatural width to this part of the figure--an effect that is
increased by the large collar which conceals the point where the
sleeve meets the dress. Examples of the large, open sleeve, in its
extreme character, may be studied with most advantage in the portraits
of Vandyck. Fig. 60, Lady Lucy Percy, after Vandyck. The effect of
these sleeves is frequently improved by their being lined with a
different color, and sometimes by contrasting the rich silk of the
outer sleeve with the thin gauze or lace which forms the immediate
covering of the arm. The figures in the plates will show the
comparative gracefulness of two kinds of large sleeves, namely,
that which is widest at the top, and that which is widest below.
If the outline of the central figure of our more modern group,
(Fig. 61,)--consisting of three figures, which is copied from a French
work,--were filled up with black, a person ignorant of the fashion
might, from the great width of the shoulders, have mistaken it for the
Farnese Hercules in petticoats.
The large sleeves, tight in the upper part, and enlarging gradually to
the wrist, which are worn by the modern Greeks, are extremely
graceful. When these are confined below the elbow, which is sometimes
done for convenience, they resemble somewhat the elbow sleeves with
wide ruffles which were so common in the time of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Sleeves like those now worn in Greece were fashionable in France in
the tenth century, and again about the beginning of the sixteenth
century. They were also worn by Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of Henry
IV., and are seen in Fig. 41.
A very elegant sleeve, fitting nearly close at the shoulder, and
becoming very full and long till it falls in graceful folds almost
to the feet, prevailed in England during the time of Henry V. and
VI. Fig. 62, copied from a manuscript of the time of Henry V., now
preserved in the British Museum. On the authority of Professor
Heideloff, it is said to have existed also in Flanders in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in France in the fifteenth
century. In the examples of continental costume, the _tout ensemble_
is graceful, and especially the head-dress; while in England the
elegant sleeve is accompanied with very short waists, and with the
hideous, horned head-dresses then fashionable. The effect of these
sleeves much resembles that of the mantles of the present day, and
from its wide flow is only adapted for full dress, or out-of-door
costume. The sleeves worn under these full ones were generally tight.
At a much later period, the large sleeves were made of more moderate
dimensions, both in length and width, and a full sleeve of fine lawn
or muslin, fastened at the wrist with a band, and edged with a lace
ruffle, was worn beneath. This kind of sleeve has recently been again
introduced into England, but has given place to another form, in which
the under sleeve of lace or muslin, being of the same size as the
upper, suffers the lower part of the arm to be visible. The effect of
this sleeve, which is certainly becoming to a finely-formed arm, is
analogous to that of the elbow sleeve, which, with its deep ruffles of
point lace, is frequent on the portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
[Illustration: Pl. 7.
Figure 63. From Bonnard's Costumes.
64. Sancta Victoria.
65. Anne, Countess of Chesterfield, from Vandyck.
67. Woman of Markinitza.
]
The slashed sleeve, criticized by Shakspeare in the "Taming of the
Shrew," was sometimes very elegant. The form in which it appears in
Fig. 63, worn in the fifteenth century, is particularly graceful. Not
so, however, the lower part of the sleeve.
In the preceding remarks, we have considered the sleeve merely in a
picturesque point of view, without reference to its convenience or
inconvenience.
The length of the waist has always been a matter of caprice. Sometimes
the girdle was placed nearly under the arms; sometimes it passed
to the opposite extreme, and was suffered to fall upon the hips.
Sometimes it was drawn tightly round the middle, when it seemed to cut
the body almost in two, like an hourglass. Judging from what we see,
we should say that this is a feat which many ladies of the present
time are endeavoring to achieve. The first and third cases are almost
equally objectionable, because they distort the figure. The hip
girdle, which is common in Greece (as shown in Figs. 48 and 53)
and Oriental countries, prevailed also in England and France some
centuries ago. The miniatures of old manuscripts furnish us with
examples of long-waisted dresses fitting closely to the person,
sometimes stiffened like the modern stays, at others yielding to the
figure. The waist of this kind of dress reached to the hips, where it
was joined to the full petticoat, which was gathered round the top--an
extremely ungraceful fashion. The hip girdle, properly used, is,
however, by no means inelegant. It is not at all necessary that it
should coincide with the waist of the dress; it should be merely
looped or clasped loosely round the figure, and suffered to fall to
its place by its own weight. But to enable it to do so in a graceful
manner, it is essential that the skirt of the dress should be so
united with the body as to produce no harsh lines of separation, or
sudden changes of curvature; as, for example, when the skirt is set on
in full plaits, or gathers, and spread over a hoop. We have before
noticed, that this point was attended to by Rubens, (Fig. 66,) by
Vandyck, (Fig. 65,) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and by the modern Greeks.
We refer also to the elegant figure 64. The most natural situation for
the girdle, or point of junction of the body with the skirt, is
somewhere between the end of the breast bone and the last rib, as seen
in front--a space of about three or four inches. Fashion may dictate
the exact spot, but within this space it cannot be positively wrong.
The effect is good when the whole space is filled with a wide sash
folded round the waist, as in Sir C. Eastlake's "Greek Girl," or some
of the graceful portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds. How much more
elegant is a sash of this description than the stiff line which
characterizes the upper part of the dress of "Sancta Victoria."
(Fig. 64.) The whalebone, or busk, is absolutely necessary to keep the
dress in its proper place. The resemblance in form between the body of
the dress of this figure and those now or recently in fashion cannot
fail to arrest the attention of the reader. Stiff, though, as it
undoubtedly is, the whole dress is superior to the modern in the
general flow of the lines uniting the body and skirt. Long skirts are
more graceful than short ones, and a train of moderate length adds to
the elegance of a dress, but not to its convenience. Long dresses,
also, add to the apparent height of a figure, and for this reason they
are well adapted to short persons. For the same reason, waists of
moderate length are more generally becoming than those that are very
long, because the latter, by shortening the skirt of the dress,
diminish the apparent height.
Besides the variation in length, the skirts of dresses have passed
through every gradation of fulness. At one time, it was the fashion
to slope gradually from the waist, without gathers or plaits; then a
little fulness was admitted at the back; then a little at the front,
also. The next step was to carry the fulness all round the waist. In
the graceful costume of the time of Vandyck, and even in the more
stiff and formal dress delineated in the pictures of Rubens, the skirt
was united to the body by large, flat plaits, when the fulness
expanded gradually and gracefully, and the rich material of the dress
spread in well-arranged folds to the feet. The lines were gently
undulating and graceful, and that unnatural and clumsy contrivance
called a "bustle"--a near relation of the hoop and fardingale--was at
that time happily unknown. This principle of uniting the skirt
gradually with the body of the dress is carried out to the fullest
extent by the modern Greeks. In the figure of the peasant from the
neighborhood of Athens, (Fig. 47,) the pelisse is made without gathers
or plaits: the skirt, which hangs full round the knees, is "gored" or
sloped away till it fits the body at the waist. The long underskirt
is, as we find from the figure of the woman of Makrinitza, (Fig. 67,)
gathered several times, so as to lie flat to the figure, instead of
being spread over the inelegant "bustle." It is only necessary to
compare these graceful figures, in which due regard has been paid to
the undulating lines of the figure, with a fashionable lady of the
present day, whose "polka jacket," or whatever may be the name of this
article of dress, is cut with violent and deep curves, to enable it to
spread itself over the bustle and prominent folds of the dress.
[Illustration: Pl. 8.
Figure 60. Lady Lucy Percy, from Vandyck.
69, 70. By Jules David, in "Le Moniteur de la Mode."
68. The hoop, after Hogarth.
]
Not satisfied with the bustle in the upper part of the skirt, some
ladies of the present day have returned to the old practice of wearing
hoops, to make the dresses stand out at the base. These are easily
recognized in the street by the "swagging"--no other term will exactly
convey the idea--from side to side of the hoops, an effect which is
distinctly visible as the wearer walks along. It is difficult to
imagine what there is so attractive in the fardingale and hoop,
that they should have prevailed, in some form or other, for so many
years, and that they should have maintained their ground in spite of
the cutting, though playful, raillery of the "Spectator," and the
jeers and caricatures of less refined censors of the eccentricities
of dress. They were not recommended either by beauty of line or
convenience, but by the tyrant Fashion, and we owe some gratitude to
George IV., who banished the last relics of this singular fashion from
the court dress, of which, until his time, it continued to form a
part. Who could imagine that there would be an attempt to revive the
hoop petticoat in the nineteenth century? We invite our readers to
contrast the lines of the drapery in the figures after Vandyck,
(Figs. 60 and 61,) and those in the modern Greek costume, (Figs. 51
and 54,) with that of a lady in a hoop, after a satirical painter,
Hogarth, (Fig. 68,) and two figures from a design by Jules David, in
"Le Moniteur de la Mode," a modern fashionable authority in dress.
(Figs. 69 and 70.) There can be no doubt which is the most graceful.
The width of the shoulders and the tight waist of the latter, will not
escape the notice of our readers.