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The Fall Fashion Show

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 5, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 48.

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The Fall Fashion Show

By M. Elisabeth Burns-Howell

EMULATING Paris, San Francisco has established a biennial fashion show, when, in concert, all the leading houses display the latest mode in every line of women's wear, vying with each other in the lavish elegance and originality of exhibits.
The season has just been opened with unusual revelations as to what the dictators of style have decreed shall be the vogue.
Now as to why there should be a dictator, or set of dictators, has never been satisfactorily explained.
When one considers the enormous economic waste of labor and material, the terrific mental and physical strain, upon those directly engaged in garment manufacture during season rushes, as well as the inconvenience and useless expense to the consumer, the frequent change of fashion resulting from the system of an arbitrary dictatorship seems decidedly irrational. The best excuse I ever heard was embodied in the following little anecdote:
Johnnie's sisters were engaged in remodeling a couple of comparatively new costumes, a procedure that seemed to Johnnie's mind quite unnecessary. His father was engrossed in his paper, but Young Hopeful was bent on securing information.
"Pa," he began, "what makes the girls tear up their new dresses?"
"Want to make them over, I suppose," was the father's answer.
"But why do they want to make them over? They're just new," Johnnie insisted.
"Well, I reckon the style's changed," said pa.
Silence for a few seconds; then, "O pa!"
"Well, what?"
"Who made the style?"
"Why, American styles originate in New York, mostly, I guess. Now don't bother me any more."
Again silence for a space.
"Pa"—timidly—"where did style come from before it got to New York?"
"Why, from Paris, the world's great fashion center. Now let me alone. I want to read."
Once more silence ensues, but not satisfaction.
Finally a faint little "Please, pa."
"Well, what?" gruffly.
"Where did style come from before it got to Paris?"
"Why, from the devil, of course! Now shut up!"
And Johnnie subsided, and properly enough; for yea and verily, in its last analysis, is not this the final word? From no other source could arise so much inconvenience and incongruity, so much wanton waste, so much of real human misery and soul wreck.
A certain cartoonist has made a late "hit" with his quaint little Joy and Gloom figures, which he introduces into many of his pictures with telling effect. By the same token, there appeared to the eye of my imagination, as I looked upon the recent parade of style and pomp, a whole battalion of pygmy creatures, trooping after the fickle and fantastic Dame Fashion — not merely the frivolous little Joys, but darkening Glooms, despairing Aches and Pains, and real Agonies even; for Madam de la Mode is the author of much agony in more senses than the old song implied:
Putting on agony, putting on style, That's what some folks are doing all the while.
She is leading lady in the great Drama of Deception in a "continuous performance" upon the world stage. Posing before the curtain as the queen of grace and beauty, behind the scenes she is unmasked, an ugly old fraud, of a character so capricious that it knows stability only in its persistent policy of deluding the simple.
Truly, it is time this time-honored "Queen Fashion" should change her title. Let her name fit her nature. Call her grand high priestess of the art of assassination; also past president of the Society for the Extinction of Human Happiness, particularly chief mischief-maker for the mothers of men — since it seems that against the female sex she aims her deadliest darts, and succeeds in foisting upon womankind her choice inventions of disease-producing discomforts.
True, the masculines are not without folly as touching their raiment; still, for general comfort, convenience, and healthful arrangement, the prevailing men's fashions so far outdistance the feminine as scarcely to admit a comparison. What man would endure the torture of literal pounds of false hair and towering hat, or the all-menacing sweep of the modern aeroplane head-gear as worn by women? Or taking the other extremity, fancy our men mincing about in French-heeled "pomp." Even the most fastidious male dresser has breadth and sense and solidity insuring real comfort in his shoes, be their quality the finest. And while we are told that a few dandies do don corsets, imagine the scorn of the average man at the idea! But woman — poor folly-stricken sex, throughout the suffering ages she has worn the yoke, her vitality the victim at one point or another.
World of woman, what but Fashion Holds you, molds you, this way, that way? Not what should be, but what "they say." Bind at feet, or waist, or neck, Come and go at Fashion's beck, O, this torture-tyrant — Fashion!
Not that every woman bends the neck. There have ever been high-minded, free-spirited, wholesome women who have refused to be style-enslaved. And in recent years these have kept up a goodly clamor against the most flagrant abuses of health and comfort and true beauty, so that at last the effect is manifest in not a few encouragements.
Instance the evolution of the corset. Not all steel blades are stilettos. There are degrees, all the way to the homely case-knife that will scarcely cut a slice of bread.
So there have come to be kinds and degrees in the matter of corsets. While nature was undoubtedly intended to be self-supporting, and certainly can not reach her highest development until so adjusted, yet for those who have not reached such a stage of advancement, and still cling to the corset as their very mainstay of bodily dependence, there is great improvement in the article available to-day, as compared with say twenty years ago. The old wine-glass figure with its deadly curve at the waist line is seldom seen now. The modern corset is built with one hundred per cent more consideration for the natural lines of the figure than the stiff bone and steel affair of a generation ago.
But the old instrument of torture still retains enough objectionable features to condemn it. The sensible woman would not mourn its departure altogether, and indeed the present season promises just this — the natural waist. An evolution in this direction has been apparent in the high waist and simple, flowing lines of the graceful and comfortable one-piece costumes of the last few seasons. These garments are built upon the Grecian outline, and require no corset as a foundation, and it is to be hoped women will at last allow nature to prevail. Whether the present tendency is a permanent one, or only a passing whim, remains to be seen.
And the agitation of the hygienists has yielded fruit in other directions, notably the vast improvement in the tailored skirt of the present hour, which is a positive delight to the woman who wears it, if she have an ounce of youthful energy and spirit in her, loving lightness and ease of movement, as well as a state of cleanliness as to hem and border never before possible.
Of course there is always the ultra tendency that runs to extremes, and the past season was not an exception, for it must be admitted that many skirts were worn too extremely short and quite too narrow — this not referring to the "hobble," but to the excellent cut known as the "straight." This garment in its modified form is not to be compared to its predecessors of other years, whether "bell-shaped" "gored," "hooped," or "en train," with their yards of hem and pounds of weight, especially when of such lengths as to perform the function of dust mop and germ collector.
So let us be thankful for such improvements as can be noted.
Now about that monstrosity, the hobble, let us congratulate the "frail sex" that with all her penchant for frailty and folly, she has proved herself a little less foolish than she was accredited with being, for the life of that absurdity was short.
Not but that the rude hand of stern necessity imparted an uncompromising nature lesson on not a few occasions, which doubtless served to bring madam to her senses. The most ridiculous of these I recall occurred at a famous English racing meet, where a whole coach load of American ladies were caught in a sudden shower while seated on top of the coach, and because of their hobbles were unable to get down, as the coach ladders had been loaned to another party, who had failed to return them.Therefore with all that the men were able to do, not one of their companions could effect a descent. O, fie! What a predicament! They couldn't climb down and they couldn't jump, and so there they were compelled to sit, like a lot of fowls on a roost, and for consolation see their fine feathers soaked in the rain. Fifty thousand dollars worth of fine gowns and hats, in the aggregate, all completely ruined by the rain! So doth nature correct our vanity!
A word now as to hats. What hope is there for the crazy-crest, if any! For years, as a sex, we have borne the seal of folly not in the forehead, but above it. What woman, be she a true woman, does not despise the modern hat, as it has been thrust upon her for the past five years! The climax of absurdity and ugliness, not to mention discomfort and inconvenience, seems to have been attained in this direction. O, yes, there are exceptions — have been a few all along. The sane woman has compelled them. She has refused to don either a wash-tub, a coal-scuttle, a wagon wheel, or a waste-basket. And at last her influence is felt. We are happy to note a return to sanity in the matter of size to some degree at least, and a decidedly better run of shapes; but this gain is at once offset, in most cases, by a ridiculous method of trimming, or it may be in the shape itself, a certain queer quality, a grotesque oddity, that smacks of the circus more than anything else, as if the aim were to appear as bizarre as possible. That this effect is highly distasteful to the woman of refinement needs not be said.
A hat? A hat? Dear me, what's that? Array of ribbons or braid or lace, A bow, a buckle, with ever a trace Of fluff or feather imparting its grace, A woman's hat, Mystery that! Our ancient mother, sun-crowned, wind-kissed Eve, Trod Eden's pathways, hatless, free did live; All unadorned her beauty primitive. No modern hat Could equal that!
Finally, as to this fashion show, the oppressive elegance everywhere noted seemed to be the thing most to be deplored, because most far-reaching in its effect.
The blaze of coloring, the riot of line and design resulting from the indiscriminate jumble of many materials and various forms of arrangement in the same garment, all tend to produce an ensemble that lacks harmony and poise, and clearly indicates a taste that is perverted, a craving for a gilt-and-tinsel effect that is crude in the extreme.
Indeed, one of the most striking features of the present season is the barbaric mingling of gold and silver beadings and braidings, with tapestry and embroideries of the most lavish Oriental pattern. And this does not suffice. These gowns must be jewel-studded and silk-lined and chiffon-draped and fur-bordered. And Lady Duff-Gordon assures us that it is now to be "the thing" to combine several kinds of fur on one costume. Fancy! And did you see those Paris hand-bags? As big as your grandmother's sewing-bag, yet as thin as a wafer, except for their elaborate trimming of any and every sort, and "under no pretext may you carry more in them than your dainty lace handkerchief." Yet their price runs up into the tens, and the girls of the shop are working day and night to produce the foolish, faddish things — of no use under the sun, and yet women will beg and men steal to keep the vain things going until their silly, wasteful, wicked course is run. Aye, more, poor wanton girls will even sell their souls for the price of them — these vanity bags and all such trinkets. O, the sin of it! and O, the shame! The loss, the labor, the grief! How many comfortable incomes dissipated, how many homes desolated, how many wrecks of health and happiness, in the vain effort to keep the pace in Fashion's train! It is "beg, borrow, or steal" often — obtain by hook or crook, the wherewithal to pay the price. And O, what a reckoning in the great day for the wealth wasted, the time wasted, and the souls wasted!
All for what? — A will-o'-the-wisp that forever eludes. A dream of to-day, an awakening to-morrow, with always the same witchery. The thing that was, is not; and that which is, vanisheth unto that which was before it.
Verily, no dictum of Holy Writ is more deeply, pertinently true than that "the fashion of this world passeth away."