with now and then. My ideal of "a beautiful woman, beautifully dressed," is not yet defined. I am not very narrow-minded with regard to either point. From the Princess in gold and white samite, to the nut-brown maid with her gown of hodden gray and her bare feet, there are thousands that are good enough for me. The only bad ones are the pretentious and vulgar (dirt and fine feathers). I saw a little "æsthetic" creature the other day, with a sad, woe-begone costume in flabby colours, a mop of tousled hair, a painted mask of a face, all in keeping, except the boots—"side-spring," if you please (if any thing so squashy could have a spring). She was only a passing vision—but enough. I could but repeat with Madame Roland under the guillotine (was it Roland?) "O Liberty (and Co.), what crimes are committed in thy name!"
The subject is a fascinating one; but there are limits—Yours faithfully,
Mr. G. A. Storey, A.R.A.
Sir,—It is difficult to pass an opinion upon "ladies' dress," because its chief characteristic seems to be that it is ever changing. We no sooner see a really pretty fashion than we hear ominous rumours—from Paris (?)—that some abomination such as the crinoline is coming in again, or the Gainsborough hat is to give place to the Pork-pie, or a small copy of the Toriodero's head-gear. We are told that costume indicates the phase or current of thought of the period and of the country in which it is worn; that it becomes sumptuous in rich communities and in prosperous times, but is sad and impoverished in times of war and depression; that it marks the degree of civilisation, of culture, of taste, and of wealth; and, like the other fine arts, has its glorious periods as well as its decadence and restoration. Perhaps it reached its lowest stage of ugliness, in this country, some thirty or forty years ago, when corkscrew ringlets, high foreheads, flat bandeaus plastered down the cheeks, evening dresses cut straight across the collar bones, flounces and crinolines, and all the other horrors that John Leech has so cleverly depicted in the early volumes of Punch were the fashions that set off our types of beauty. May we then conclude that taste has improved since those days, and not only taste, but common sense? At the present moment we see nothing outrageous to find fault with, and much that is pretty to admire. It would take up too much space to go into detail: to discourse on hats alone would require a separate letter of some pages. I should have to show how some set off the face and others do not, and how it often happens that the success of a hat depends very much upon the face that looks out from under it. And so with the way the hair is dressed, &c.; and I need scarcely say that a pretty, graceful woman will make almost any costume look well if she puts it on with taste, whereas there are certain other figures that require special treatment.
There some, whom I would not offend, but who nevertheless are deficient in those graceful curves that Nature bestows upon her best art, who require farthingales, hoops, improvers, and even flounces to disguise the angularity of their structure, whilst others go the other extreme of rotundity, such as a lady I knew, who was taller when she sat down than when she stood up, and must baffle the most ingenious contrivers of European costume, and whom nothing but a Chinese or loose Japanese gown could make at all presentable.
I think female dress may be either very gorgeous, or very simple—gorgeous as a Venetian lady when Titian and Paul Veronese delighted to depict her in rich brocades and a wealth of pearls and jewellery, or simple as in England a hundred years ago, when our great-grandmothers wore muslin gowns with short waists and silk sashes, the beauty and refinement of their faces making their chief attraction, and the simplicity of the dress leaving full scope for the gracefulness of the figure to display itself, as we see in the pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, George Morland, Romney, and others.
But the great artists seldom adhere to the passing fashions; they arrange the dress or reconstruct it so that it shall be most becoming to their sitters and at the same time make a good composition of colour and form for their pictures. This is also done by ladies of taste, who will often turn some freak of fashion into a thing of beauty, and, regardless of their milliner and dressmaker, will adopt some modification of the passing style if it seems to them more suitable and becoming.
The sense of fitness in dress as in everything else, should, I think, guide the fair sex of whatever degree—and I must say that there are fewer costumes more suitable and,
