_Fashion.—Total Change in the English Costume.—Leathern Breeches.—
Shoes.—Boots.—Inventors of new Fashions.—Colours.—Female Fashions.—
Tight lacing.—Hair-dressing.—Hoops.—Bustlers.—Rumps.—Merry-Thoughts
and Pads._
The caprice of fashion in this country would appear incredible to you,
if you did not know me too well to suspect me either of invention or
exaggeration. Every part of the dress, from head to foot, undergoes such
frequent changes, that the English costume is at present as totally
unlike what it was thirty years ago, as it is to the Grecian or Turkish
habit. These people have always been thus capricious. Above two
centuries ago a satirist here painted one of his countrymen standing
naked, with a pair of shears in one hand, and a piece of cloth in the
other, saying
I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here,
Musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear,
For now I will wear this, and now I will wear that,
And now I will wear I cannot tell what.
When J. was a school-boy every body wore leathern breeches, which were
made so tight that it was a good half-hour's work to get them on the
first time. The maker was obliged to assist at this operation:—observe,
this personage is not called a tailor, but a maker of breeches,—tailors
are considered as an inferior class, and never meddle with leather. When
a gentleman was in labour of a new pair of leathern breeches, all his
strength was required to force himself into them, and all the
assistant-operators to draw them on: when it was nearly accomplished,
the maker put his hands between the patient's legs, closed them, and
bade him sit on them like a saddle, and kick out one leg at a time, as
if swimming. They could not be buttoned without the help of an
instrument. Of course they fitted like another skin; but woe to him who
was caught in the rain in them!—it was like plucking a skin off to get
out of them.
The shoes—I am not going back beyond a score of years in any of these
instances—were made to a point in our unnatural method; they were then
rounded, then squared, lastly made right and left like gloves to fit the
feet. At one time the waistcoat was so long as to make the wearer seem
all body; at another time so short that he was all limbs. The skirts of
the coat were now cut away so as almost to leave all behind bare as a
baboon, and now brought forward to meet over the thigh like a petticoat.
Now the cape was laid flat upon the shoulders, now it stood up straight
and stiff like an implement of torture, now was rounded off like a
cable. Formerly the half-boot was laced: the first improvement was to
draw it on like a whole-boot; it was then discovered that a band at the
back was better than a seam, and that a silken tassel in front would be
highly ornamental, and no doubt of essential use. By this time the
half-boot was grown to the size of the whole one. The Austrians, as they
were called, yielded to the Hessians, which, having the seams on each
side instead of down the back, were more expensive, and therefore more
fashionable. Then came an invention for wrinkling the leather upon the
instep into round folds, which were of singular utility in retaining the
dirt and baffling the shoeblack. At length a superior genius having
arisen among boot-makers, the wheel went completely round, and at this
present time every body must be seen in a pair of whole-boots of this
great man's making.
"Almost all new fashions offend me," says Feyjoo, "except those which
either circumscribe expense, or add to decency."—I am afraid that
those reasons are practically reversed in England, and that fashions are
followed with avidity in proportion as they are extravagant and
indecorous—to use the lightest term. The most absurd mode which I have
yet heard of was that of oiling the coat and cold-pressing it; this gave
it a high gloss, but every particle of dust adhered to it, and after it
had been twice or thrice worn it was unfit to be seen. This folly, which
is but of very late date, was too extravagant to last, and never I
believe extended into the country. I asked my tailor one day, who is a
sensible man in his way, who invented the fashions. "Why, sir," said he,
"I believe it is the young gentlemen who walk in Bond-street. They come
to me, and give me orders for a new cut, and perhaps it takes, and
perhaps it does not. It is all fancy, you know, sir." This street serves
as a Prado or Alameda for all the fops of rank, and happy is he who gets
the start in a new cut; in the fall of a cape, the shape of a sleeve, or
the pattern of a button. This emulation produces many abortive attempts,
and it is amusing to see the innovations which are daily hazarded
without ever attaining to the dignity of a fashion.
Colour, as well as shape, is an affair of fashionable legislation.
Language is nowhere so imperfect as in defining colours; but if
philosophical language be deficient here, the creative genius of fashion
is never at a loss for terms. What think you of the Emperor's eye, of
the Mud of Paris, and _Le soupir étouffé_,—the Sigh supprest? These I
presume were exotic flowers of phraseology, imported for the use of the
ladies; it is however of as much importance to man as to woman, that he
should appear in the prevailing colour. My tailor tells me I must have
pantaloons of a reddish cast, "All on the reds now, sir!" and reddish
accordingly they are, in due conformity to his prescription. It is even
regulated whether the coat shall be worn open or buttoned, and if
buttoned, whether by one button or two, and by which. Sometimes a cane
is to be carried in the hand, sometimes a club, sometimes a common twig;
at present the more deformed and crooked in its growth the better. At
one time every man walked the streets with his hands in his coat pocket.
The length of the neck-handkerchief, the shape, the mode of tying it,
must all be in the mode. There is a professor in the famous Bondstreet,
who, in lessons at half-a-guinea, instructs gentlemen in the art of
tying their neck-handkerchiefs in the newest and most approved style.
The women have been more extravagant than the men;—to be more foolish
was impossible. Twenty years ago the smaller the waist the more
beautiful it was esteemed. To be shaped like a wasp was therefore the
object of female ambition; and so tight did they lace themselves, or
rather so tightly were they laced, for it required assistant strength to
fasten their girths, that women have frequently fainted from the
pressure, and some actually perished by this monstrous kind of suicide.
About the same time they all wore powder; the hair at the sides was
stuck out in stiff curls, or rolls, tier above tier, fastened with long
double black pins; behind it was matted with pomatum into one broad flat
mass, which was doubled back and pinned upon a cushion, against which
the toupee was frizzed up, and the whole frosted over with powder,
white, brown, pink, or yellow. This was the golden age of hairdressers;
the ladies were completely dependent upon them, and obliged to wait,
patiently or impatiently, for their turn. On important occasions, when
very many were to be drest for the same spectacle, it was not unusual to
submit to the operation over night, and sit up all night in
consequence,—for to have lain down would have disordered the whole
furniture of the upper story. The great hoop, which is now confined to
the court, was then commonly worn in private parties. Besides this there
were protuberances on the hips called bustlers, another behind which was
called in plain language a rump, and a merry-thought of wire on the
breast to puff out the handkerchief like a pouting pigeon. Women were
obliged to sip their tea with the corner of their mouths, and to eat
sideways. A yet more extraordinary costume succeeded, that of pads in
front, to imitate what it must have been originally invented to conceal.
All these fashions went like the French monarchy, and about the same
time; but when the ladies began to strip themselves, they did not know
where to stop.
And these follies travel where the science and literature and domestic
improvements of the English never reach! Well does Anguillesi say in his
address to Fashion:
Non perchè libera e industre
Grande è in pace è grande in guerra,
Or tra noi si chiara e illustre
E la triplice Inghilterra;
Non perchè del suo Newtono
Và quel suol fastoso e lieto,
E del Grande per cui sono
Nomi eterni Otello e Amleto;
Ma perchè ti nacque idéa
D' abbigliarti a foggia inglese,
Oggidi, possente Dea,
Parla ognun di quel paese.
Quindi in bella emulazione
Quai _Mylord_ vestir noi vedi,
E l'italiche matrone
Come l'angliche _Myledi_.
Not because she is free and industrious, great in
peace and great in war, is triple England now so dear
and so illustrious among us; not because that land
proudly rejoices in her Newton, and in that great
one by whom Othello and Hamlet are become immortal
names. But because it has pleased thee, O
powerful goddess, to attire thyself after the English
mode,—every one speaks of that country. Hence
it is that in fine emulation we are seen to dress like
My-lord, and Italian matrons like the English My-lady.—TR.