for the others to come and see, and was exalted, not recognizing the first shackles of my slavery. Now, first, I become acquainted with Fashion; now, first, I regard other people’s clothes as the most important factor in the production of my own. Too truly it is the close of the first chapter, the end of innocence, the end of joy, the end of sexlessness. I am irrevocably a woman: imitation and emulation are henceforth the distinguishing motives of my costume. Now, first, I look in the glass to see my frock, and then I look a little higher to see that face and that mop of curls I wear, and I wonder what colors best suit them. I look at the eyes, too, and at the secrets they tell me, and I wonder what external clothes and conduct are most becoming to those eyes and to that inner meshed personality they reveal. What is becoming! The word is epitome of all that the grown-up is and the child is not.
The period of my teens was the period when my wardrobe was continually in abeyance upon the higher claims of my education. It was not possible simultaneously to beautify my brain and my body. I acquiesced in the circumstance, for the most part, with occasional fits of passionate revolt, and more or less constant misanthropy. I blush to recall that at one time the light which was in me turned to darkness for a year or more, and all on account of my clothes. I found myself at a great city school, I a shy little country waif, most curiously clad. I looked at the clothes of my compeers, and I locked my lips and my heart against all converse with my fellows, and I walked to the top of my classes in a desolation of spirit that was tragic. I would have exchanged my monthly reports with those of my most addle-pated classmate if I could have had her clothes. Never since have I approached the intellectual achievement of fourteen; but the shabbiness of my motives was greater than that of my costume. The effect was not wholly evil, but I here confess that I never should have learned Latin rules if I had been prettily dressed. I wanted to show those stylish misses that there was no backwoods brain under my backwoods hat—that was all! I attributed to others a snobbishness wholly my own, and for that once clothes came perilously near costing me all human joy in human friendship. If my wardrobe had never bettered, I might now be a female Diogenes,—and incidentally have furnished meteoric display for a dozen universities. My clothes improved; I am not friendless, but dull and illiterate, and all through the shaping destiny of dress.
This paragraph in my history yields me this much of philosophy as regards the influence of clothes on the social relations. My dress, so long as it be not conspicuous for disorder, disruption, or display, has much less effect on others than on myself. But as for myself, since I am a woman, and it is ordained of fate that I be forever subdued to what I wear, I shall never, except when I believe myself suitably dressed, be able to look my fellow creature in the eye with the level gaze of conscious equality which alone gains friendship. No woman was ever so proud as not to cringe in an ugly hat. No woman is ever so happy as not to be made unhappy by her clothes. Let the dress reformers prattle to the breezes,—there is no exaltation like that of knowing one’s costume stylish, becoming, and, if possible, expensive. Only by recognizing our limitations may we women successfully cope with them; one’s own respect is surest guarantee of other people’s; for women self-respect is soonest secured by clothes: therefore, O women, dress!
I have digressed from the contemplation of my girlhood, but I have not exhausted that time, for I have not touched upon second-hand clothes or long dresses. As a girl I was perpetually made over. I came to regard fresh material as something almost sacrilegious. Of all gift-horses, clothes are the most difficult not to criticise, and especially old clothes. My prosperous cousins did not possess my complexion, my tastes, or my figure, and yet I inevitably succeeded to their
