The trimming mania is frightful. What do you think of one hundred
and twenty yards,--three hundred and sixty feet,--four thousand
three hundred and twenty inches of ribbon in the trimming of one
dress?
I wish I could command for an hour the pen of a Jenkins, and give
the names of the various ribbons and shades of ribbons, of the
laces, their origin, style, and value. (Each kind of lace has a
history, which is dear to the heart of the devotee of fashion.) I
wish I could describe the hundred and one crimps and frills and
things. I wish I could command the pen of one of these amazing
writers about woman's dress. I would give you ten pages of it.
I say again, that the trimming mania has become insufferable. Unless
a woman has a dressmaker, she must be the veriest slave. She must be
at it morning, noon and night.
Gather in one place all the artists, authoresses, and women of
finest and highest culture, and how many of them do you suppose
could be bribed to go into the street all rigged out in ribbon,
gimp, frills, edgings, ruches, fringes, satins, velvets, buttons,
nail-heads, etc., etc., etc.
I have met many of the women who may be classed as above, and I
cannot now recall one who was fashionably trimmed.
This rage is, in essence, tawdry and vulgar. It is cheap in
everything but money.