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The Dress Question

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 18, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 7.

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The Dress Question.

By Christian Union

NO OBSERVING person will contradict the statement that there is a moral influence in good clothes. Any school-teacher will tell you that the most incorrigible pupil is more pliable, more teachable, when clothed in a new jacket or dress; even a new paper collar, the remains of Sunday finery, has been known to civilize and humanize while it remained unsoiled; and a new bow of ribbon on a girl who scarcely suggested a feminine quality has made a gentle, womanly monitor while the ribbon remained bright. There are hundreds of teachers who would gladly keep a stock of clothing as an aid to discipline, were it proper or feasible to do so.
The influence of good clothes is not confined to the ragged, untrained element of the community. A glove or shoes without buttons, a dress with a braid in ragged condition, has thrown an able woman from her usual poise of calm and dignified self-reliance into one of distrust and helplessness. Indeed, it is an accepted fact that one must be clothed in harmony with the time, the place, and the position, in order to be self-forgetful.
By the same law can a woman be hidden behind the gorgeousness of her attire. How many carry away from an assembly only the remembrance of an extravagant or self-asserting costume, and no consciousness of the wearer! How often women on the street, as well as at the reception, have the air of figures designed to display so many yards of dry goods arranged according to existing modes, their dress seeming so entirely apart from themselves! A costume beautiful in itself may disfigure, or be disfigured by, the wearer. There must be a harmony, a fitness, between the clothing and the clothed. And this harmony depends on a principle that lies deeper than artistic qualities of material, color, or design. A woman may study to produce, and succeed in producing, a costume perfect in all its details, and wear it as though it were part of herself, and yet give no sense of pleasure in the wearing, nor have a sense of pleasure, because it is out of harmony with her position. The first principle of being well dressed is that the cost shall not exceed the legitimate sum afforded by the provider, whether that provider be the wearer or a husband or father. If the cost of the dress be beyond the sum that can be afforded without effort of self-denial in things of greater importance in the family life, it cannot be, no matter how artistic, a source of pleasure to the wearer or those whom she dresses to please.
No husband can rejoice in the possession of a wife who dresses in such a manner that he knows the thought she will suggest to every friend is, How can they afford it? No father can rejoice in the consciousness of a stylishly dressed daughter, when he knows that his friends would have a higher respect for him and for his family if they dressed in a manner suited to their position financially. It is the Christian duty of every mother to educate her daughters to this principle of fitness to position, to time and place, and this education must begin in childhood. What can be more incongruous than to see a father with hands grimed and disfigured by his daily labor, coat old and shabby, shoes showing intimate acquaintance with the cobbler, leading by the hand a tiny little one clothed in a plush coat, deep cotton-lace collar, and head covered by a monstrosity of velvet and feathers! But the baby is filled with the sense of her fine clothes, and is learning her first lesson, that the comfort and peace of the family is secondary to the style and cut of her clothes.
It has not been an unmitigated blessing to the laboring and poorer classes of our country that cheap grades of expensive materials are possible because of the mechanic arts. A thing may be beautiful in itself that will not be beautiful, or even pleasing, when not surrounded by harmonious conditions.
A dress that, all other conditions being equal, would be a delight in the parlor on a reception day, seems sadly out of place on Fourteenth street, with the wearer's arms filled with brown paper parcels, and the wearer's face drawn and haggard because a battle of buying ten dollars' worth of goods for five dollars has been going on for hours. We know when we look at the wearer that the costume must answer for all occasions—party, church, and street. All the money that could be got together went to purchase an outfit that is out of all harmony with the wearer's position in life. Instead of looking with pleasure, we give a sigh for weak humanity and its lack of independence, and pass on.
When women are educated to realize the enormity of the sin of living and dressing beyond their income, the daily papers will record fewer embezzlements and less misuse of trust funds. Nine-tenths of the crimes of this order are traceable to the false ideals and extravagant notions of the female members of the family.—Christian Union.