WOMAN'S DRESS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 8, 1879

WOMAN'S DRESS.

From an article in the Alliance of Apr. 26, we take the following:—

“From the time of Addison until now, at any rate, the public press has kept up a pretty continual fire of derision at the extravagances of woman's attire. And it must be confessed that there has been abundant basis for ridicule. From the swelling hoop to the confining pull-back, from the towering bonnet to the wisp of straw, from the chignon leaping with one fell swoop from a resting place on the cerebellum to a position crowning the bump of Imitation, the changes have been so violent, the contrasts so marked, that the lightest wit has found opportunity and material for a laugh thereat.”

“And while men have laughed, some sensible women have struggled hard against the dicta of fashion, have protested a little, and then bought the latest bonnet. The ridicule of man and the rebellion of woman have been alike in vain. The fashion-plate has been omnipotent in the realm of female material environment.”

“Great is the power of the fashion-plate. An impossible dummy, with apparently inapproachable clothing, is depicted on the pages of the fashion magazine; and the cut of the clothing which it pictures, invented for the wealthy to wear in the glare of a full-dress evening party, is reproduced on the person of poverty in the village house of God.”

“Trains like the unspread tail of the useless peacock, graceful in their proper place, at a grand reception, are used here in America to sweep the street-crossings and country roads, by city dame and village maid. We suppose we have heard hundreds of women, during the reign of the peacock-dress, long for the return of the short-skirted walking-suit; but not one of that number had the independence to order a short dress made. No woman in American ‘society’ has the small courage to be neat and comfortable in spite of the dreadful fashion-plate.”

Will not every woman professing godliness make haste to free herself from this stinging charge?