Woman as Decoration Part 11

CHAPTER XVIII

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The eighteenth century is unique by reason of scientific discoveries, mechanical inventions and chemical achievements, coupled with the gigantic political upheaval of the French Revolution.

It is unique, distinguished and enormously fruitful. For example, the modern frenzy for chintz, which has made our homes burst into bloom in endless variety, had its origin in the eighteenth century looms at Jouy, near Versailles, under the direction of Oberkampf.

Before 1760 silks and velvets decorated man and his home. Royal patronage co-operating with the influence of such great decorators as Percier and Fontaine gave the creating of beautiful stuffs to the silk factories of Lyons.

Printed linens and painted wall papers appeared in France simultaneously, and for the same reason. The Revolution set ma.s.s-taste (which is often stronger than individual inclination), toward unostentatious, inexpensive materials for house furnis.h.i.+ng and wearing apparel.

The Revolution had driven out royalty and the high aristocracy who, with changed names lived in seclusion. Society, therefore, to meet the ma.s.s-desire, was driven to simple ways of living. Men gave up their silks and velvets and frills, lace and jewels for cloth, linen, and sombre neck-cloths. The women did the same; they wore muslin gowns and their own hair, and went to great length in the affectation of simplicity and patriotic fervour.

We hear that, apropos of America having at this moment entered the great struggle with the Central Powers, simplicity is decreed as smart for the coming season, and that those who costume themselves extravagantly, furnish their homes ostentatiously or allow their tables to be lavish, will be frowned upon as bad form and unpatriotic.

These reactions are inevitable, and come about with the regularity of _tides_ in this world of perpetual repet.i.tion.

The belles of the Directorate shook their heads and bobbed their pretty locks at the artificiality Marie Antoinette et cie had practised. I fear they called it sinful art to deftly place a patch upon the face, or make a head-dress in the image of a man-of-war.

Mme. de Stael's familiar head-dress, twisted and wrapped around her head a la Turque, is said to have had its origin in the improvisation of the court hairdresser. Desperately groping for another version of the top-heavy erection, to humour the lovely queen, he seized upon a piece of fine lace and muslin hanging on a chair at hand, and twisting it, wrapped the thing about the towering wig. As it happened, the chiffon was my lady's chemise!

We begin the eighteenth century with a full petticoat, trimmed with rows of ruffles or bands; an overskirt looped back into paniers to form the bustle effect; the natural hair powdered; and head-dress of lace, standing out stiffly in front and drooping in a curtain behind.

It was not until the whim of Marie Antoinette decreed it so, that the enormous powdered wigs appeared.

Viennese temperament alone accounts for the moods of this lovely tragic queen, who played at making b.u.t.ter, in a cap and ap.r.o.n, over simple muslin frocks, but outdid her artificial age in love of artifice (not Art) in dress.

This gay and dainty puppet of relentless Fate propelled by varying moods must needs lose her lovely head at last, as symbol of her time.

PLATE XXV

Mrs. Vernon Castle in a summer afternoon costume appropriate for city or country and so adapted to the wearer's type that she is a picture, whether in action; seated on her own porch; having tea at the country club; or in the Winter sun-parlour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Mrs. Vernon Castle in Afternoon Costume--Summer_]

CHAPTER XIX

WOMAN IN THE VICTORIAN PERIOD

The first seventy years of the nineteenth century seem to us of 1917 absolutely incredible in regard to dress. How our great-great-grandmothers ever got about on foot, in a carriage or stage-coach, moved in a crowd or even sat in any measure of serenity at home, is a mystery to us of an age when comfort, convenience, fitness and chic have at last come to terms. For a vivid picture of how our American society looked between 1800 and 1870, read Miss Elizabeth McClellan's _Historic Dress in America_, published in 1910 by George W.

Jacobs & Co., of Philadelphia. The book is fascinating and it not only amuses and informs, but increases one's self-respect, if a woman, for _modern_ woman dressed in accordance with her role.

We can see extravagant wives point out with glee to tyrant mates how, in the span of years between 1800 and 1870 our maternal forebears made money fly, even in the Quaker City. Fancy paying in Philadelphia at that time, $1500 for a lace scarf, $400 for a shawl, $100 for the average gown of silk, and $50 for a French bonnet! Miss McClellan, quoting from _Mrs. Roger Pryor's Memoirs_, tells how she, Mrs. Pryor, as a young girl in Was.h.i.+ngton, was awakened at midnight by a note from the daughter of her French milliner to say that a box of bonnets had arrived from Paris.

Mamma had not yet unpacked them and if she would come at once, she might have her pick of the treasures, and Mamma not know until too late to interfere. And this was only back in the 50's, we should say.

Then think of the hoops, and wigs and absurdly furbished head-dresses; paper-soled shoes, some intended only to _sit_ in; bonnets enormous; laces of cobweb; shawls from India by camel and sailing craft; rouge, too, and hair grease, patches and powder; laced waists and cramped feet; low necks and short sleeves for children in school-rooms.

Man was then still decorative here and in western Europe. To-day he is not decorative, unless in sports clothes or military uniform; woman's garments furnish all the colour. Whistler circ.u.mvented this fact when painting Theodore Duret (Metropolitan Museum) in sombre black broadcloth,--modern evening attire, by flinging over the arm of Duret, the delicate pink taffeta and chiffon cloak of a woman, and in M.

Duret's hand he places a closed fan of pomegranate red.

CHAPTER XX

s.e.x 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 fas.h.i.+on.

To-day, we say parrot-like, that certain materials, lines and colours are masculine or feminine. They are so merely by a.s.sociation. 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, a.s.syria, Media, Persia and the Far East, men and women wore the same materials, as in China and j.a.pan 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.

Thas wore a gilded wig, but so did the men she knew, and they added gilded false beards.

a.s.syrian 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 pa.s.sion 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 cla.s.sic interior decoration in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, England, etc., did not at once revive the cla.s.sic lines in woman's clothes.

PLATE XXVI

Mrs. Vernon Castle costumed a 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Mrs. Vernon Castle Costumed a la Guerre for a Walk_]