SEX IN COSTUMING
"European dress" is the term accepted to imply the costume of man and
woman which is entirely cosmopolitan, decrying continuity of types (of
costume) and thoroughly plastic in the hands of fashion.
To-day, we say parrot-like, that certain materials, lines and colours
are masculine or feminine. They are so merely by association. The modern
costuming of man the world over, if he appear in European dress (we
except court regalia), is confined to cloth, linen or cotton, in black,
white and inconspicuous colours; a prescribed and simple type of
neckwear, footwear, hat, stick, and hair cut.
The progenitor of the garments of modern men was the
Lutheran-Puritan-Revolutionary garb, the hall-mark of democracy.
It is true that when silk was first introduced into Europe, from the
Orient, the Greeks and early Romans considered it too effeminate for
man's use, but this had to do with the doctrine of austere denial for
the good of the state. To wear the costume of indolence implied
inactivity and induced it. As a matter of fact, some of the master
spirits of Greece did wear silks.
In Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Media, Persia and the Far East, men and women
wore the same materials, as in China and Japan to-day. Egyptian men and
their contemporaries throughout Byzantium, wore gowns, in outline
identical with those of the women. Among the Turks, trousers were always
considered as appropriate for women as for men, and both men and women
wore over the trousers, a long garment not unlike those of the women in
the Gothic period.
Thaïs wore a gilded wig, but so did the men she knew, and they added
gilded false beards.
Assyrian kings wore earrings, bracelets and wonderful clasps with
chains, by which the folds of their draped garment,--cut like the
woman's, might be caught up and held securely, leaving feet, arms and
hands free for action.
When the genius of the Byzantine, Greek and Venetian manufacturers of
silks and velvets, rich in texture and ablaze with colour, were offered
for sale to the Romans, whose passion for display had increased with
their fortunes, and consequent lives of dissipation, we find there was
no distinction made between the materials used by man and woman.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Renaissance spells brocade. Great
designs and small ones sprawled over the figures of man and woman alike.
Lace was as much his as hers to use for wide, elaborate collars and
cuffs. Embroidery belonged to both, and the men (like the women) of
Germany, France, Italy and England wore many plumes on their big straw
hats and metal helmets. The intercommunication between the Orient and
all of the countries of the Western Hemisphere, and the abundance and
variety of human trappings bewildered and vitiated taste.
Unfortunately the change in line of costume has not moved parallel to
the line in furniture. The revival of classic interior decoration in
Italy, Spain, France, Germany, England, etc., did not at once revive the
classic lines in woman's clothes.
PLATE XXVI
Mrs. Vernon Castle costumed à la guerre for a walk in the
country.
The cap is after one worn by her aviator husband.
This is one of the costumes--there are many--being worn by
women engaged in war work under the head of messengers,
chauffeurs, etc.
The shoes are most decidedly not for service, but they will
be replaced when the time is at hand, for others of stout
leather with heavy soles and flat heels.
[Illustration: _Mrs. Vernon Castle Costumed à la Guerre for
a Walk_]