Slavery of Fashion

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 17, 1879

Slavery of Fashion

Slavery of Fashion.

SOME people think the milliners and dress makers can make fashions at their will, but this is not quite true. Fashion is above all, —a most inexorable tyrant. Convenience, comfort, health, are nothing in this scale. The following paragraph is a good commentary on the condition of the world of fashion:—“Several years ago a number of American women who had become interested in the question, sent to Worth, the celebrated Parisian modiste, asking him: ‘ What costume can be devised that will be perfectly healthy and at the same time beautiful?’ He replied: ‘I have to make the same answer to you that I have made to the women of Europe. The costume of the Persian women is the handsomest upon the face of the earth. It consists of a loose waist, short skirt and trousers not too loose. I have made this costume beautifully and hung it up in Paris, but the women will not wear it. I can do nothing more. They must suffer until they are willing to adopt it.’”