DO WOMEN DRESS TO PLEASE MEN?
The female attire--Women dress for breakfast and undress for
dinner--You don't know them from Eve--Society likes to be
exposed--How French, English, German and American women
dress--Simplicity in dress the coquetry of some women--What would
happen if two women remained alone on the face of the earth.
Never in the history of female attire have women dressed so exquisitely
as they do in this year of grace 1901. The figure is gracefully
accentuated; all the sculptural lines are discreetly indicated without
any exaggeration. No more bustle, no more outrageous sleeves, no more
deformities of any sort. Many a woman would have been in despair if
Nature had made her as fashion has often made her appear.
To-day it is the female form divine, beautifully draped in beautiful
limp materials of soft, delicate hues, gracefully relieved by lovely
lace and refined trimmings, the whole with a touch of simplicity that
never fails to enhance the beauty of the wearer. No, never since the
classical days of Athenian dress have women looked so beautiful as they
do now.
The majority of us men are, I believe, conceited enough to think that
women dress and try to look as beautiful as possible to please us. My
firm conviction is that women dress to please themselves--or to kill
other women with envy. To the question, Do women dress to please men? I
answer most emphatically, No, they do not. Quite the contrary.
And now, may I be permitted to remark that when I reflect that Eve,
after eating an apple, discovered that she was naked, I cannot help
thinking that a little bite at that fruit might be of service to many
ladies before they leave their dressing-rooms to go to a ball, a
theatre, or a dinner party? Is it that the fashion of the day requires
the train to be so long that there remains no material to make a
corsage with? From the way in which women dress in the evening, you
might almost mistake them for Eve.
The fact is that it is practically impossible for you to say what it is
that the women wear around a dinner-table. Women dress for breakfast
and undress for dinner. As for the sight offered to our gaze from the
boxes at the opera, we might as well be in a Turkish bath. And the most
amusing and edifying part of it is that this fashion is more
flourishing in puritanical England than in any country I know, and that
most of those beautiful daughters of Albion whom you see so much of are
the very same ones who are presidents, vice-presidents and secretaries
of the societies for the suppression of the nude in the public parks,
the museums and art-galleries and other British institutions for the
suggestion of indecency.
Who says that the world is sad?
'Society ought to be exposed,' I once remarked to a beautiful member of
the English aristocracy, 'for giving that bad example.' 'You are quite
right,' she said; 'but that will do no good, because I believe that
there is nothing that English society enjoys more than being exposed.'
'Evidently!' I thought, as I looked at the glorious shoulders exposed
to my gaze.
I was quite right when I once exclaimed: 'Provided an English woman
does not show her feet, she is safe and feels comfortable.'
In the way of dressing, of all the women of Europe and America, the
Germans are the worst, the French the best, and the Americans the
smartest. The German women are covered, the English clothed, the
Americans arrayed, and the French dressed. I am not now speaking of
high life--these people are the same all the world over; and whenever a
writer publishes a criticism on the life and manners of any nation he
ought to place the following epigraph at the top of every page he
writes, so that the reader may not lose sight of it: 'All civilized
nations in the world are alike in one respect: they are composed of two
kinds of people--those that are ladies and gentlemen, and those that
are not.' Then there could be no misunderstanding about what he writes.
I think it is acknowledged that the French women are the best dressed
women in the world, and that French dressmakers are the authority on
what should be worn and how it should be worn. Next I should say
decidedly the American woman. In the United States the latest French
fashions are worn in all their freshness and glory, but too often with
exaggeration. And, when the French fashions are already outrageous in
their extravagance of style and size, then the Lord help the American
women! I shall never forget the remark that that most delightful of men
and writers, Oliver Wendell Holmes, made to me some years ago, as we
were talking on the subject of women's dress: 'By the time a French
milliner has been six months in New York she will make you a bonnet to
frighten a Choctaw Indian.' But then, Dr. Holmes was a refined
Bostonian.
The French woman, at an afternoon or evening party, may be as
beautifully and stylishly dressed as you like, there is always about
her dress a certain little touch of simplicity that will make you think
that somewhere in her wardrobe she keeps some frock or gown still more
beautiful, stylish and expensive. Very often at breakfast-time an
American woman will make you think that she has on her very best and
smartest dress. I have seen some at the leading hotels of Jacksonville
and St. Augustine, Florida, with diamond brooches and bracelets at
breakfast. The American woman has a supreme contempt for what is not
silk, satin, velvet or crepe de chine. She generally looks dressed for
conquest. With her it is paint and feathers and hooray all the time! On
board a steamer across the Atlantic she wears silk and fifty-dollar
hats. But, of course, these ladies do not belong to the Olympian sets.
I have mentioned all this because woman's character is very much the
same all over this little planet of ours. Now, of all these women, the
Americans are those who devote most time and spend most money over
their appearance, and as they would be least of all accused of thinking
for one moment how they look for the sake of the men, I say I have
proved my answer to be right, that women do not dress for men.
Indeed, if the end of the world were to witness the presence of two
women only on the face of the earth, each would be discovered striving
to outshine the other and look the better dressed of the two.