Individualism Versus Fashion
Fashion is a deadly enemy of Romantic Love, not only because it makes women sacrifice their Beauty to unhealthful garments and habits, but because it obliterates individuality, on which the ardour of Love depends. “Why don’t girls marry?” asks Mrs. Haweis. “Because the press is great, and girls are undistinguishable in the crowd. The distinguishable ones marry—those who are beautiful or magnetic in some way, whose characters have some definite colouring, and who can make their individuality felt. I would have said—who can make themselves in any way conspicuous, but that the word has been too long associated with an undesirable prominence. Yet after all, prominence is the thing needed—prominence of character, or individuality. Men, so to speak, pitch upon the girls they can see: those who are completely negative, unnoticeable, colourless, formless, invisible, are left behind.”
Women, in their eagerness to sacrifice their individuality to Fashion, forget that fashion leaders are never in fashion, i.e. that they always adopt a new style as soon as the crowd has aped them: wherefore it is doubly silly to join the apes.
Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt never allows a corset to deform her figure and mar her movements: and who has not had occasion to admire the inimitable grace of this actress? But how many women have the courage thus to sacrifice Fashion to Grace and Beauty?
Yet, notwithstanding the continuance of the corset and the bustle mania and Parisian hats, it may be asserted that women are just at present more sensibly dressed than they have been for some generations, and there is some disposition to listen to the artistic and hygienic advice of reformers. Unfortunately, the history of Fashion does not tend to confirm any optimistic hopes that may be based on this fact. There have been periods heretofore when women became comparatively sensible, only to relapse again into utter barbarism. Thus we read that “after the straight gown came the fardingale, which in turn developed into the hoop with its concomitants of patches, paint, and high-heeled shoes.” Then came the reaction: “Short waists and limp, clinging draperies came in to expose every contour; stays and corsets were for a time discredited, only to be reintroduced, and with them the whole cycle of fashions which had once already had their day.”
Experience shows that argumentation, ridicule, malicious or good-natured, and satire, are equally powerless against Fashion. Progress can only be hoped for in two ways—by instructing women in the elementary laws of beauty in nature and mankind, and by destroying the superstitious halo around the word Fashion. It has just been shown that a disposition to imitate a fashion set by others is always a sign of inferior intellect and rudimentary taste; and the time no doubt will come when this fact will be generally recognised, and when it will be considered anything but a compliment to have it said that one follows the flock of fashionable imitators.
The progress of democratic institutions and sentiments will aid in emancipating women from the slavery of Fashion. Empresses who can set the fashion for two continents are becoming scarce; and the woman of the future will no doubt open her eyes wide in astonishment on reading that in the nineteenth century most women allowed some mysterious personage to prescribe what they should wear. “Can it be possible,” she will exclaim, “that my poor dear grandmothers did not know that what is food for one person is poison for another, and that any fashion universally followed means æsthetic suicide for nine-tenths of the women who adopt it? I am my own fashion-leader, and wear only what is becoming to my individual style of beauty. What a preposterous notion to proclaim that any particular colour or cut is to be exclusively fashionable this year for all women, for blondes and brunettes, for the tall and the short, the stout and the slim alike! What could have induced those women thus to annihilate their own beauty deliberately? And not only their beauty, but their comfort as well. For I see that in New York, Fashion used to decree that women must exchange their light, comfortable summer clothes for heavier autumn fabrics exactly in the middle of September, although the last two weeks of September are often the hottest part of the year. And the women, almost without exception, obeyed this decree!
“And then those long trailing dresses! How they must have added to their ease and grace of movement in the ballroom, tucked up clumsily or held in the hand! And it seems that these trails were even worn in the dirty streets, for I see that at one time the Dresden authorities forbade women to sweep the streets with their dresses; and in one of Mr. Ruskin’s works I find this advice to girls: ‘Your walking dress must never touch the ground at all. I have lost much of the faith I once had in the common sense, and even in the personal delicacy, of the present race of average English women, by seeing how they will allow their dresses to sweep the streets if it is the fashion to be scavengers.’”