Fashion is a deadly enemy of Romantic Love, not only because it makes
women sacrifice their Beauty to unhealthful garments and habits, but
because it obliterates _individuality_, on which the ardour of Love
depends. “Why don’t girls marry?” asks Mrs. Haweis. “Because the press
is great, and girls are undistinguishable in the crowd. The
distinguishable ones marry—those who are beautiful or magnetic in some
way, whose characters have some definite colouring, and who can make
their _individuality_ felt. I would have said—who can make themselves in
any way conspicuous, but that the word has been too long associated with
an _undesirable_ prominence. Yet after all, prominence is the thing
needed—prominence of character, or _individuality_. Men, so to speak,
pitch upon the girls they can see: those who are completely negative,
unnoticeable, colourless, formless, invisible, are left behind.”
Women, in their eagerness to sacrifice their individuality to Fashion,
forget that _fashion leaders are never in fashion_, _i.e._ that _they_
always adopt a new style as soon as the crowd has aped them: wherefore
it is doubly silly to join the apes.
Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt never allows a corset to deform her figure and mar
her movements: and who has not had occasion to admire the inimitable
grace of this actress? But how many women have the courage thus to
sacrifice Fashion to Grace and Beauty?
Yet, notwithstanding the continuance of the corset and the bustle mania
and Parisian hats, it may be asserted that women are just at present
more sensibly dressed than they have been for some generations, and
there is _some_ disposition to listen to the artistic and hygienic
advice of reformers. Unfortunately, the history of Fashion does not tend
to confirm any optimistic hopes that may be based on this fact. There
have been periods heretofore when women became comparatively sensible,
only to relapse again into utter barbarism. Thus we read that “after the
straight gown came the fardingale, which in turn developed into the hoop
with its concomitants of patches, paint, and high-heeled shoes.” Then
came the reaction: “Short waists and limp, clinging draperies came in to
expose every contour; stays and corsets were for a time discredited,
only to be reintroduced, and with them the whole cycle of fashions which
had once already had their day.”
Experience shows that argumentation, ridicule, malicious or
good-natured, and satire, are equally powerless against Fashion.
Progress can only be hoped for in two ways—by instructing women in the
elementary laws of beauty in nature and mankind, and by destroying the
superstitious halo around the word _Fashion_. It has just been shown
that a disposition to imitate a fashion set by others is always a sign
of inferior intellect and rudimentary taste; and the time no doubt will
come when this fact will be generally recognised, and when it will be
considered anything but a compliment to have it said that one follows
the flock of fashionable imitators.
The progress of democratic institutions and sentiments will aid in
emancipating women from the slavery of Fashion. Empresses who can set
the fashion for two continents are becoming scarce; and the woman of the
future will no doubt open her eyes wide in astonishment on reading that
in the nineteenth century most women allowed some mysterious personage
to prescribe what they should wear. “Can it be _possible_,” she will
exclaim, "that my poor dear grandmothers did not know that what is food
for one person is poison for another, and that any fashion universally
followed means æsthetic suicide for nine-tenths of the women who adopt
it? _I_ am _my own fashion-leader_, and wear only what is becoming to my
_individual_ style of beauty. What a preposterous notion to proclaim
that any particular colour or cut is to be exclusively fashionable this
year for all women, for blondes and brunettes, for the tall and the
short, the stout and the slim alike! What _could_ have induced those
women thus to annihilate their own beauty deliberately? And not only
their beauty, but their comfort as well. For I see that in New York,
Fashion used to decree that women must exchange their light, comfortable
summer clothes for heavier autumn fabrics exactly in the middle of
September, although the last two weeks of September are often the
hottest part of the year. And the women, almost without exception,
obeyed this decree!
“And then those long trailing dresses! How they must have added to their
ease and grace of movement in the ballroom, tucked up clumsily or held
in the hand! And it seems that these trails were even worn in the dirty
streets, for I see that at one time the Dresden authorities forbade
women to sweep the streets with their dresses; and in one of Mr.
Ruskin’s works I find this advice to girls: ‘Your walking dress must
never touch the ground at all. I have lost much of the faith I once had
in the common sense, and even in the personal delicacy, of the present
race of average English women, by seeing how they will allow their
dresses to sweep the streets if it is _the fashion to be scavengers_.’”