The Reform Dress by W. H. Littlejohn

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 13, 1872

The Reform Dress.

By W. H. Littlejohn

That a reform in the dress of females, as worn at the present time, is necessary, few will be found ready to deny. The almost unanimous verdict of those who have given attention to this subject is, that many of the fashions in vogue at present are not only in the highest degree ridiculous, but that they are also, in many respects, destructive to life, and therefore criminal.

In view of these facts, a style of wearing apparel has been adopted by many ladies, which, obviating the difficulties alluded to above, meets the demands of the case in the most satisfactory manner.

While, by a change of material employed in its manufacture, it can easily be adapted to the rigors of a cold, or the greater heat of a warm, latitude, should the wearer see fit to imitate the example of those females of the continent, who, despite the annoying and inconvenient appendages which society has imposed upon them, are in the habit of seeking health and enjoyment upon the highway, or in the fields, she will find that that which hitherto has appeared like an irksome task, has now become a pleasant pastime.

Should she, on the contrary, from necessity or choice, devote herself exclusively to the honorable discharge of home duties—clothed as she is in a dress which descends to a point not less than eight inches from the floor, and neatly fitting pants, which shield the ankles from the gaze of the vulgar, and protect them from the injurious effects of the snow, rain, and dew—she moves about the house or farm with a facility equal to that of her more stalwart brother, who, in the habit of seeking enjoyment of his more resolute sex, has stoutly repudiated every custom calculated to hamper him in his movements, as made in the pecuniary interest of its inventor.

In fine, she has at a single bound, leaped every barrier in this direction which has hitherto separated her from a proper relation to the laws of life.

That activity which is so indispensable to health, and yet which is so distasteful to very many of her sex, because of the artificial impediments in the way of easy and natural movement, now becomes a source of satisfaction, since by her own constitution—other things being equal—there is a spring of joy to be found in motion, similar to that which, in the animal kingdom, impels the unfettered lamb to skip upon the lawn, or the unrestrained bird to cleave the air with apparently tireless wing.

With such advantages in favor of the proposed innovation, we should naturally anticipate for it a speedy and complete triumph. This, however, judging from its history hitherto, is not to be experienced.

The same dogged opposition which changes—even in the highest degree beneficial—have ever met with, already characterizes this contest.

One is reminded of the long, and on the one side disgraceful, struggle of the last, and the first portion of the present, century, between the friends of the old-fashioned, clumsy, and bungling wooden plow, and those of its more modern and highly useful iron rival. When demonstration had been made complete, and it had been shown again and again, by actual experiment that the new invention was superior, both as it regarded the character of the work which it performed and the amount which it was capable of executing in a given time, the opposers of the latter, unwilling to leave the field of debate, upon which they had been fairly vanquished, suddenly discovered satisfactory evidence for the retention of the old and the rejection of the new article, in the fact that the iron surface of the latter imparted a poison to the furrow which it so handsomely laid in its proper place!

Thus the more modern adherents to the old style of dress, when at last compelled to give way before the practical and sound arguments presented by the friends of the new one, are in the habit of falling back upon one or the other of the following positions: Say they, on the one hand, It is immodest; or, on the other, It is out of taste.

To the first of these objections, we have only to say that he who could discover, in a properly dressed foot and neatly panted ankle, that which would shock his conception of propriety, presents an acuteness of moral sense which is only to be compared with the chemistry which could detect in the soil through which the polished metal surface of the modern steel or iron plow had passed, the evidences of the subtle poison which it had imparted.

In other words, so far as the objection under consideration is concerned, it might be shown that the facts are overwhelmingly in favor of the new system; but the same morbid conception of what is proper and what is not in these matters which has led the objector to oppose the reform from the standpoint taken above, would induce him to regard as indecorous an exposition in print of the indecent exposures which necessarily result from his own favorite system.

As regards the other position, it is worthy of some consideration. However, before we allow it to turn the scale in the argument, it is highly proper to determine just how much weight—if true—it ought to have in this contest.

Suppose we admit, for the moment, that it is in every respect sound, does that necessarily lead to the conclusion that the change should not be made? To our mind, it is very far from doing so.

To illustrate: We are generally agreed that a prunella slipper furnishes a more graceful and becoming covering for a lady's foot than a heavy bootee or an arctic over-shoe.

But who, as a consequence, would think of insisting for a moment that she should be compelled, in cold as well as hot weather, to wear the former and reject the latter for fear of offending some one's ideas of taste?

By this it will be seen that we all recognize the fact that considerations of taste should never be regarded as primary, but are always looked upon as of a secondary nature.

Before, therefore, the above argument is taken as being conclusive in its authority, it must be shown that it is supported by advantages of a more substantial character. But this, as we have already shown, cannot be done.

Again: Before the objection urged should be regarded as final, it would be well to remember that it is one thing to assert, and another, and entirely different thing, to prove the accuracy of its statement.

Who does not know that nothing is more contradictory and variable than the opinions of individuals in regard to such things?

The diversity arises from the fact that there is, in matters of taste, no uniformly acknowledged standard to which the differences of individuals may be brought, and by the measurement of which they may be decided.

Instance the nations who, differing widely from those among us who—apparently taking the wasp as their model, persist in girding themselves to such an extent as even to shorten life—have, on the contrary, gone to the opposite extreme, and for the purpose of enlarging rather than compressing the waist as a mark of symmetrical proportion are in the habit of winding themselves in numerous wrappings of cloth.

As a better exemplification of this idea, and one which is not open to the objection that it represents the views of a rude class of people, since it is drawn from the history of the Greeks—a nation the accuracy of whose artistic conceptions will not be questioned—take the statue of Venus de Medici. This wonderful production of art, about two thousand years old, was originally regarded as a perfect model of female proportions. And yet, so decided has been the change in such matters, from that time to this, it has been stated by a recent writer that while in nearly every respect it would answer the demands of modern taste, so great is the size of the waist as compared with the rest of the form, that a critic of our time would be shocked at the departure, in this particular, from what to him would seem to represent a perfect model.

Once more: Not only is it true that men look upon these things in different lights, but it is also a fact which many will recognize, that the same person at different periods in his own life, finds his likes and dislikes materially changed, and not unfrequently entirely reversed from what they formerly were. To-day, a gentleman appears in society for the first time with a fashionable, but unusually long-skirted, dress-coat. At first, we are not favorably impressed with its appearance. In process of time, however, the style is uniformly adopted, and the eye, as a consequence becoming accustomed to it, we wonder that we could have ever admired the old fashion, now gone into disuse, and when occasionally seen, regarded as decidedly unbecoming.

Again: A lady purchases that which is determined by her friends to be in every way a neat and becoming hat, which from its ample size covers and protects the whole head, and upper portion of the face. But three months pass, and it gives way to another, constructed upon an entirely different model, and which, while not attaining to half the size of the former, is pronounced by all beholders a perfect paragon of beauty.

As the result of facts of this character, some have decided that the line of taste is purely an imaginary one, which each is at liberty to locate for himself.

Without adopting this view, however, we think that we shall be safe in concluding that, whenever found, it will establish the proposition that, in matters of dress, conformity to the outlines of the human form, as given to man originally—and, as a consequence of its divine origin, necessarily perfect in beauty and symmetry—will furnish the rule in these matters, which should be strictly followed, except when limited by the necessities and proprieties of our fallen condition.

But we have already seen that these harmonize perfectly with the one which is presented by the dress reform. And, as it has the additional advantage of approximating more nearly in the outline which it presents, to that of the individual, we must also conclude that it is really, at one and the same time, the style of dress which—while answering all the demands of comfort, health, and ease in locomotion—is also the most nearly in accordance with a just standard of taste. In view of these facts, it seems to us that it is worthy of universal adoption.

That this can be brought about in a brief space of time, would be too much to expect. But we shall confidently look for progress in this direction so long as those females who are thoroughly convinced of the soundness of the views advanced in this article, shall continue to put them in practice in their respective communities, until they shall have either lived down, or shamed into silence, an unreasoning opposition.

W. H. LITTLEJOHN, in Health Reformer.