From Emmeline I learned that I had been doing the fashion designers an
injustice. I had always imagined that styles were the creation of
Parisian dressmakers who worked with only two ends in view--novelty and
discomfort. But Emmeline assured me that styles are a faithful record of
the march of civilisation. When the Manchurian War was under way,
everything in the shops was Russian. When Herr Strauss produced
"Salome," half the world went in for the slim and viperous costume. The
revolution in Persia worked a revolution in blouse decoration. Later
everything was Bulgarian.
"In that case," I said, "those poor fellows at Adrianople have not died
in vain. Under a rain of shot and shell I can hear the Bulgarian
officers rallying their men: 'Forward, my children! The eyes of Fifth
Avenue are upon you! Fix bayonets! For King, for country, and for
Paquin!' The Turks, being a backward millinery nation, naturally had no
chance."
"What you say is extremely amusing, of course," remarked Emmeline. "But
I seem to remember an old suit of yours. It was about the time of the
Boer War. The coat was cut like an hour glass and there was cotton
wadding in the shoulders so that you had to enter a room sideways. The
trousers were Zouave. Yes, it must have been about the time of the Boer
War or the war with Spain."
"That was just when the feminist movement was beginning to shape our
ideals," I retorted.
Not only do the styles symbolise the process of historic evolution--I
distinctly recall toilets on Fifth Avenue which must have commemorated
the Messina earthquake and the report of the New York Tenement House
Commission--but styles actually follow an evolution of their own. They
do not change abruptly, but melt into each other. Thus the costume
which Emmeline described as Bulgarian could not have been altogether
that. The coat was military enough, with its baggy shoulders and a bold
backward sweep of the long skirts. But this coat was worn over a gown
that was unmistakably hobble, revealing the persistence of the Salome
influence. To call this outfit Bulgarian is to raise the supposition
that the Bulgarians hopped to victory at Kirk-Kilisseh.
I pointed this out to Emmeline, and at the same time took occasion to
protest against the extravagant lengths to which the languorous styles
were being carried. It was bad enough, I said, to see elderly matrons
arrayed like Oriental dancing girls. But what was worse was to see young
girls, mere children, in scant and provocative attire. I thought the law
might very well take up the question of a minimum dress for women under
the age of eighteen.
"Of course it's disgusting," said Emmeline, "but it's their right."
"I know that youth has many rights," I said, "but I didn't know that
the right to make one's self a public nuisance and offence is among
them."
"What I mean," said Emmeline, "is that we have outgrown the days when
young ladies fainted and wives fetched their husbands' slippers. We have
broken the shackles of mid-Victorian propriety and are working out a new
conception of free womanhood. Our ideas of modesty are changing. You
might as well make up your mind to be shocked quite frequently before
the process is completed."
"Oh, I see," said I. "Enslaved within the iron circle of the home,
crushed by the tyranny of convention, of custom, of man-made laws, woman
lifts up her head and declares she will be free by inserting herself
into a skirt thirteen inches in diameter. Where's the sense of it?"
"It's all very simple," said Emmeline. "It means that we are having an
awful time trying to escape from the degradation into which you have
forced us. We struggle forward, and then the habits of the harem
civilisation which you have imposed on us assert themselves. Do you
think we women love to dress? Every time we try on a pretty gown we know
that we are riveting on the chains of our own servitude."
"But why make the chains so tight?" I said.
She now turned to face me.
"The reason for the sheath-gown is quite plain," said Emmeline. "Men
have always shown such a decided preference for actresses and dancing
girls that we others have taken to imitating actresses and dancing girls
in self-defence."
"But that isn't so at all," I said. "Look at your trained nurses in
their simple white caps and aprons. They are bewitching. It is
universally conceded that the most dangerous thing in the world is for
an unmarried man to be operated on for appendicitis. That was the way,
you'll recall, Adam obtained his wife--after a surgical operation. The
case of the hospital nurse alone disposes of your entire argument about
our predilection for dancing girls."
"That I do not admit," said Emmeline. "It is true that a man finds
himself longing for what is simple and wholesome whenever there is
something the matter with him."
"When I spoke of the immodesty of present-day fashions," I said,
adroitly turning the subject, "I am afraid I gave you the wrong
impression. It isn't the viciousness of the thing that I object to, it's
the stupid, sheeplike spirit of imitation behind it. If the passion for
tight gowns indicated a kind of spiritual development, I shouldn't mind
it even if it was development in the wrong direction. There might be an
erring soul in the hobble, but still a soul. If the young girl of good
family who strives to look like a lady of the chorus did so out of sheer
perversity, there would be some comfort. One must think and feel to be
perverse. What appals me is the dreadful, unquestioning innocence with
which the thing is done. If we males are indeed responsible for what you
are, then we have a real burden on our souls. We have done more than
degrade you; we have made automata out of you. The little girl behind
the soda counter who paints her face and hangs jet spangles from her
ears will just as readily comply with fashion by putting on a military
cape and boots, or a pony coat, or calico and a sunbonnet, or an
admiral's uniform, or a _yashmak_."
"A what?" said Emmeline, frowning slightly.
"A _yashmak_," I replied, meeting her gaze steadily. "I use the word
with confidence because I have just looked it up in the dictionary. At
first I confused it with _sanjak_, which, on examination, turns out to
be a district in the Balkan Peninsula bounded on the east by Servia and
on the north by Bosnia-Herzegovina. A _yashmak_ is the long veil worn by
Moslem women to conceal the face and the outlines of the upper part of
the body."
"You seem to have prepared pretty thoroughly for this discussion," said
Emmeline.
"I have always considered it prudent before entering into debate with a
woman to have a few facts on my side," I said.
"As if that made any difference," she replied scornfully.
"As to the sheeplike way in which women follow the fashions of the
moment," continued Emmeline, "it simply isn't true." I could see she was
terribly in earnest now. "There are tens of thousands of women who dress
to please themselves; independent, courageous, self-reliant women who
face life seriously and rationally. We are going in more and more for
loose and comfortable things to wear."
"Not the typical woman of to-day, I assure you."
"Of course not the typical woman," said Emmeline. "Any Exhibition of
common-sense by a woman at once makes her a freak. You prefer the other
kind for your ideal of the eternal womanly. Take her and welcome. I
suppose it is necessary for a man to have something worthless to work
for."