By I. D’ISRAELI.
The origin of many fashions was in the endeavor to conceal some
deformity of the inventor; hence the cushions, ruffs, hoops, and other
monstrous devices. If a reigning beauty chanced to have an unequal
hip, those who had very handsome hips would load them with that false
rump which the other was compelled by the unkindness of nature to
substitute. Patches were invented in England in the reign of Edward
VI by a foreign lady, who in this manner ingeniously covered a wen on
her neck. Full-bottomed wigs were invented by a French barber, one
Duviller, whose name they perpetuated, for the purpose of concealing
an elevation in the shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VII of France
introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs. Shoes with very long
points, full two feet in length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet,
Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large excrescence on one of his feet. When
Francis I was obliged to wear his hair short, owing to a wound he
received in the head, it became a prevailing fashion at court. Others,
on the contrary, adapted fashions to set off their peculiar beauties;
as Isabella of Bavaria, remarkable for her gallantry, and the fairness
of her complexion, introduced the fashion of leaving the shoulders and
part of the neck uncovered.
Fashions have frequently originated from circumstances as silly as
the following one. Isabella, daughter of Philip II, and wife of
the Archduke Albert, vowed not to change her linen till Ostend was
taken; this siege, unluckily for her comfort, lasted three years;
and the supposed color of the archduchess’s linen gave rise to a
fashionable color, hence called _l’Isabeau_, or the Isabella; a kind of
whitish-yellow-dingy. Sometimes they originate in some temporary event:
as after the battle of Steenkirk, where the allies wore large cravats,
by which the French frequently seized hold of them, a circumstance
perpetuated on the medals of Louis XIV, cravats were called Steenkirks;
and after the battle of Ramillies, wigs received that denomination.
The hair has in all ages been an endless topic for the declamation of
the moralist, and the favorite object of fashion. If the _beau monde_
wore their hair luxuriant, or their wig enormous, the preachers, as
in Charles the Second’s reign, instantly were seen in the pulpit with
their hair cut shorter, and their sermon longer, in consequence;
respect was, however, paid by the world to the size of the _wig_, in
spite of the _hair-cutter_ in the pulpit. Our judges, and until lately
our physicians, well knew its magical effect. In the reign of Charles
II the hair-dress of the ladies was very elaborate; it was not only
curled and frizzled with the nicest art, but set off with certain
artificial curls, then too emphatically known by the pathetic terms of
_heart-breakers_ and _love-locks_. So late as William and Mary, lads,
and even children, wore wigs; and if they had not wigs, they curled
their hair to resemble this fashionable ornament. Women then were the
hair-dressers.
The courts in all ages and in every country are the modelers of
fashions, so that all the ridicule, of which these are so susceptible,
must fall on them, and not upon their servile imitators the citizens.
This complaint is made even so far back as in 1586, by Jean des Caures,
an old French moralist, who, in declaiming against the fashions of
his day, notices one, of the ladies carrying mirrors fixed to their
waists, which seemed to employ their eyes in perpetual activity. From
this mode will result, according to honest Des Caures, their eternal
damnation. “Alas!” he exclaims, “in what age do we live: to see such
depravity which we see, that induces them even to bring into church
these scandalous mirrors hanging about their waists! Let all histories
divine, human, and profane be consulted; never will it be found that
these objects of vanity were ever thus brought into public by the most
meretricious of the sex. It is true, at present none but the ladies
of the court venture to wear them; but long it will not be before
every citizen’s daughter, and every female servant, will wear them!”
Such in all times has been the rise and decline of fashion; and the
absurd mimicry of the citizens, even of the lowest classes, to their
very ruin, in straining to rival the newest fashion, has mortified and
galled the courtier.