Today we poke fun at low-riding, oversize pants with underwear showing, muffin-tops, blue hair, pink hair, no hair, ill-conceived and UN-strategically located tattoos, preppy looks, "mom" looks, dominatrix looks, girlie looks. The list is endless and today, more than ever, that list depends on your personal taste because anything goes.
Pundits have been making fun of fashion for as long as people have been adorning themselves. I can well imagine cavewomen cattily discussing the local belle, "Oh, my! Gertrude is using a FEMUR in her hair! It's much too large for her freakishly small head! I'm surprised that she can maintain her balance with that bone tottering and swaying in the wind. Speaking of balance, she's got her coconut-shell shoes on upside down again...!!"
HOW strange is the origin of a fashion! The "abomination of wigs" was first adopted by a Duke of Anjou to conceal a personal defect! Charles the Seventh of France introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs. The absurdly long-pointed shoes—often two feet in length— were invented by Henry Plantagenet to cover a very large excrescence he had upon one of his feet. When Francis L was obliged to wear his hair short on account of a wound in the head, the crop became the prevailing fashion of his Court. Madame de Montespan invented the robe battante, or hooped skirt, to conceal an accident in her history; which, however, occurred at such regular periods that people soon began to guess the cause when they perceived the effect. Not least curious of all is the origin of the long-fashionable shade of yellow called Isabella. When Ostend was besieged by the Spaniards, the Infanta Isabella of Spain, in a fit of injudicious patriotism, made a solemn vow not to change her linen till the town was taken. Tho besieged, either not hearing this vow or else too rebellious to regard it, held out till time, which sullies every thing, and possibly perspiration, if, indeed, Infantas of Spain do perspire, brought her Royal Highness's linen to a color which needed a name. In a person of her rank it could not be dirty; and so it was called Isabella, became the fashionable loyal color, and was worn, so says the chronicler, "with honor by all, and with convenience by many"—making loyalty, so to speak, dirt cheap.
We have it on the best historical authority* that the present prominence of the nasal organ on the Israelitish face divine is owing, in great measure, to the fact that, at one time, when the propriety of abolishing that somewhat distinctive feature was in debate in the Israelitish camp, the tyrant Fashion came to its rescue. Here is the account of the transaction—not in Homeric verse, but as veracious as though it were:
The gentle reader will perceive (on reference to the first Jewish countenance he may meet) that the plea was found quite unanswerable.
What might have been the result had it been disregarded who can tell? 'Tis certain that very sad effects have ensued upon a failure to pay proper heed to the behests of the mighty potentate. Take, for instance, the Liliputian nation, who (as recorded by their veracious historian, Swift) declared war against the inhabitants of Blefuscu, solely because the latter refused to break their eggs at the same end which Fashion dictated to the former as the proper one for breakage. The Big-Endian rebellions cost the monarch of Liliput not less than forty first-rate ships of war, a multitude of smaller vessels (the war being chiefly maritime), and 30,000 of his best seamen and soldiers; while the loss of the Big-Endians—the rebels—was, rightly, much greater.
So Louis the Eleventh of Franco had the temerity to crop his hair and shave his beard at a time when Fashion dictated ambrosial locks and flowing beard. What was the consequence? His Queen, Eleanor of Acquitaine, properly disgusted at such contempt of appearances, rested not till she procured a divorce, and married the Count of Anjou, afterward King of England. Is it too much to suppose that the interminable wars which followed upon this alliance were brought about, primarily, by the injudicious conduct of King Louis?
Who will say, looking upon these and like facts, that Fashion is to be contemned; or that her changes are unworthy the historian's note or the philosopher's attention? As for the popular mind—that is, with its usual sagacity keenly alive to any thing relating to so important a subject as dress, as is at once proven by the common remark, in every body's mouth, of knowing a man by the style of his coat, or, as Captain Cuttle would put it, "by the cut of his jib."
First among fashionable follies—on the score of absurdity—come the trunk hose, which were thought indispensable about the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and which were, in fact, a sort of masculine counter-puff to the verdingale, which then first began to swell the fair proportions of feminine loveliness, taking the place of the hoop of our day. The coat is what the dandy of our times most prides himself on. From the time of Henry VIII of England, and for the three succeeding reigns, his breeches were the objects of a young man's chief solicitude. Figure 1, representing James the First of England in hunting costume, is taken from a book devoted to various fashionable methods of killing time, published in the year 1614. It will be seen that " the great, round, abominable breech,"- as it was styled, then tapered down to the knee, and was slashed all over, and covered with embroidery and lace. Stays were sometimes worn beneath the long-waisted doublets of the gentlemen, to keep them straight and confine them at the waist. In our illustration the King is evidently encased in whalebone.
The fashion varied. We read of "hose pleated as though they had thirty pockets;" "two yards wide at the top;" and (date 1658) of "petticoat-breeches, tied above the knee, ribbons up to the pocket-holes, half the width of the breeches, then ribbons hanging all about the waistband, and shirt hanging out''—which last fashion may be said to have altogether died out among our modern dandies. We read of breeches "almost capable of a bushel of wheat;" and of alterations which had to be made in the British Parliament House, to afford additional accommodations for the members' seats.
It is related of a fast man of the time, that, on rising to conclude a visit of ceremony, he had the misfortune to damage his nether integuments by a protruding nail in his chair, so that by the time he gained the door the escape of bran was so rapid as to cause a state of complete collapse.
A law was made "against such as did so stuff their breeches to make them stand out; whereupon," says an ancient worthy, "when a certain prisoner (in these tymes) was accused for wearing such breeches contrary to law, he began to excuse himself of the offence, and endeavoured by little and little to discharge himself of that which he did weare within them; he drew out of his breeches a pair of sheets, two table-cloaths, ten napkins, four shirts, a brush, a glass, a combe, and night-caps, with other things of use, saying, 'Your worships may understand that because I have no safer a storehouse, these pockets do serve me for a roome to lay my goods in; and though it be a straight prison, yet it is a store-house big enough for them, for I have many things more yet of value within them.' And so his discharge was accepted and well laughed at; and they commanded him that he should not alter the furniture of his storehouse."
Figure 2 is an excellent representation of a dandy of 1646, from a very rare broadside printed in that year. From the description of his garments we learn that he wears a tall hat with a bunch of ribbon on one side and a feather on the other, his face spotted with patches, two love-locks, one on each side of his head, which hang down upon his bosom, and are tied at the ends with silk ribbons in bows. A mustache encompasses his mouth. His band or collar, edged with lace, is tied with band-strings and secured by a ring. A tight vest is left partly open, and between it and his breeches his shirt sticks out. The cloak was in those days carried upon the arm. His breeches were ornamented with "many dozens of points at the knees, and above these, on cither side, were two great bunches of ribbon, of several colors." His legs were incased in "boot-hose tops, tied above the middle of the calf, as long as a pair of shirt-sleeves, and double at the ends, like a ruff-band. The tops of the boots were very large, fringed with lace, and turned down as low as his spurres, which gingled like the bells of a morrice-dancer as he walked." In his right hand he carried a stick, which he "played with as he straddled along the street singing."
With such boots "straddling" was an ungraceful necessity. A buck of those days, who was probably not well up to the straddling dodge, complains that " one of the rowels of my silver spurs catched hold of the ruffle of my boot, which being Spanish leather, and not subject to tear, overthrew me!"
The love-lock worn by our beau caused an immense sensation among quiet, staid people. Mr. Prynne wrote against it a quarto volume, called "The Unloveliness of Love-locks," in which he quotes a nobleman who, having been scared from this vanity by a violent sickness, "did declare the love-lock to be but a cord of vanity by which he had given the devil hold fast to lead him at his pleasure; who would never resign his prey as long as he nourished this unlovely bush."
Patches, mentioned above as one of the decorations of our beau, were introduced about the middle of the seventeenth century. The fashion is said to have come from Arabia. Among Eastern nations a black mole is considered a "beauty spot," a fit theme for poetic raptures. Hence those to whom Nature had denied this boon endeavored to imitate it by means of black silk and paste. In England, however, the taste was arbitrary, and the excess to which it was carried during the reign of Queen Anne was as barbarous as comical. Pepys makes frequent mention of the mode in his "Diary," as: "My wife seemed very pretty to-day, it being the first time I had given her leave [!] to wear a black patch." And again: "May 5—To the Duke of York's Play-house: one thing of familiarity I observed in my Lady Castlemaine; she called to one of her women for a little patch off her face, and put it into her mouth and wetted it, and so clapped it upon her own, by the side of her mouth." .
When at its height the patching mania must have made curious havoc among the facial charms of the fair daughters of Eve. Various shapes were used. A satirical poet of 1658 says:
This lady's face (Figure 3) is from a portrait of a reigning beauty of those times, and may be considered a fair sample of the fashion. She lias a star and half-moon upon the cheek, a circular mark upon her chin, and—marvel of marvels, a coach, two coachmen and two horses with postillions upon her forehead!
Patches were even made a symbol of political allegiance—the ladies who favored the Tories patching the right side of the face, while those who adhered to the Whigs patched the left side. Mr. Spectator tells us that, "Whatever may be the motives of a few fantastical coquettes, who do not patch for the public good so much as for their own private advantage, it is certain there are several women of honor who patch out of principle, and with an eye to the interests of the country." And we learn farther that these ladies were very far above sacrificing the public welfare for the sake of any mere personal feeling, as, "in a late draught of marriage-articles, a lady has stipulated with her husband that, whatever his opinions are, she shall be at liberty to patch on which side she pleases."
Patches were absolutely requisite as ornamental toilet appendages even so late as 1766, but soon after went out of fashion. The women of Chili and Peru to this day affect the mode, but with them the black plasters are but little variegated in shape. A patch on each temple is thought a rare beautifier in some portions of Spanish South America.
Masks formed another fashionable decoration to the face—ostensibly to preserve the complexion, but in reality to lend a fancied charm to the features. In Figure 4, from a portrait taken in the middle of the seventeenth century, we see the half-mask, which was thought sufficiently ornamental to be worn with full dress. During the reign of Charles II. few ladies visited the theatre unmasked. We read of
During the latter half of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries vizard masks, covering the entire face, were worn by ladies when they rode out. They were suspended to the side by a string, as shown in Figure 5, copied from a print of 1743. When in use these masks were held by the teeth, by means of a round bead fastened on the inside.
John Durant Breval, who wrote a poem on "The Art of Dress," in 1717, claims for the hoop an English origin. He sings:
Hoops, however, seem in the first place to have been rather an extension or exaggeration of a feature in female dress mentioned so early as the beginning of the fifteenth century, under the name of " padding, or false hips." It was not till toward the close of the seventeenth century that we hear much of them. Good old Sir Roger de Coverley, describing the portraits of his ancestors hanging up in his family mansion, says: "You see, Sir, my grandmother has on the new-fashioned petticoat, except that the modern [1710] is gathered at the waist. My grandmother appears as if she stood in a large drum; whereas the ladies now walk as though they were in a go-cart." The " drum" style is shown in Figure 6, from a portrait of the Earl and Countess of Somerset, which will give the reader an accurate idea of the state of dress during a part of the reign of James I. of England. The "new-fashioned petticoat," which, according to Sir Roger, caused the ladies to walk as though they were in a go-cart, is shown in Figure 7. It widens gradually from the waist to the ground; and the gown is looped up around the body in front, and falls in loose folds behind, somewhat after the manner of the washer-women of the present time.
The shape and size of the hoop has undergone, at different times, remarkable changes. A writer of the last century says: "It (the hoop) has been known to expand and contract itself from the size of a butter-churn to the circumference of three hogsheads. At one time it was sloped from the waist in a pyramidal form; at another, it was bent upward like an inverted bow, by which the two angles, when squeezed upon both sides, almost came in contact with the ears; and again it is nearly oval in form, and scarce measures, from end to end, above twice the length of the wearer!" Figures 8 and 9 furnish samples of these styles, in sketches taken from contemporary prints.
Figure 9 is from a print dated 1746, and gives a pretty good idea of those hoops which spread at the sides. These were formed of whalebone, and their wearers doubled them round in front, or lifted them up on each side, when they entered a door or carriage.
About 1740 an ugly novelty was introduced, called the sacque—a wide, loose gown, open in front, and hanging free of the body from the shoulders to the ground, being gathered in great folds over the hooped petticoat, which was thus made to take up more room than ever.
About 1750 an exceedingly small cap (Figure 11) was the mode; and this, with the hair closely turned up beneath it, gave, by contrast with the enormous bulging hoops, an extraordinary meanness to the head when compared with the rest of the body.
The Spectator ceased not to make sport of the hoops of his day. We find there the petition of "one William Jingle, coach-maker and chair-maker of the liberty of Westminster," which states that for the service of ladies wearing hoop petticoats said Jingle "has built a round chair in form of a lantern, six yards and a half in circumference, with a stool in the centre of it; the said vehicle being so contrived as to receive the passenger by opening in two in the middle, and closing mathematically when she is seated." And farther, " that petitioner has also invented a coach for the reception of one lady only, who is to be let in at the top." And " that the said coach has been tried by a lady's woman, in one of these full petticoats, who was let down from a balcony and drawn up again by pulleys, to the great satisfaction of her lady and all who beheld her."
The Tattler reports the proceedings in a trial held by himself upon one of the hooped ones, who "was taken up as she went out of the puppet-show-some three nights ago." Having divested this young lady of her hooped garment, a jury of matrons brought her into the house. "I had before given directions for an engine of several legs, that could contract or open itself like the top of an umbrella, in order to place the petticoat upon it, by which means I might take a leisurely survey of it as it should appear in its proper dimensions. I directed the machine to be set upon the table, and dilated in such a manner as to show the garment in its utmost circumference; but my great hall was too narrow for the experiment, for before it was half unfolded it described so immoderate a circle that the lower part of it brushed upon my face as I sat in my chair of judicature. I then inquired for the person who belonged to the petticoat, and to my great surprise was directed to a very beautiful young damsel, with so pretty a face and shape that I bid her come out of the crowd, and seated her upon a little crock at my left hand.
"'My pretty maid,' said I, do you own yourself to have been the inhabitant of the garment before us?' I then ordered the
garment to be drawn up by a pulley to the top of my great hall, and afterward to be spread open by the engine it was placed upon, in such a manner that it formed a very splendid and ample canopy over our heads. I entered upon the whole cause with great satisfaction, as I sat under the shadow of it."
An instrument or appendage called "a pair of hips," was, as before said, the predecessor and also contemporary of the hoop. In 1710, a lady whose maid has run away, taking with her some of the recherche articles of her mistress's wardrobe, advertises the truant and the lost valuables. Among the latter are mentioned "four pairs of silk stockings, curiously darned (darned stockings being also then the rage), three pairs of fashionable eyebrows, two sets of ivory teeth, and one pair of box (wood) for common use, with two pairs of hips of newest fashion."
Figure 12 is from a print in a French work, date of 1727, and represents an Alsatian belle of that period. There is evidence in the manner in which her gown hangs that hoops were then the mode even in Alsace. The dress of this belle is very curious. Her robe appears to be of two different materials, half the petticoat being laid in very fine close plaits and the other half in larger plaits. The body is made with an immensely long pointed stomacher, trimmed with lace and jewels. Over it is a lace handkerchief with long pointed ends, apparently of black silk trimmed with black lace. The sleeves are full, puffed, short, and open, longer beneath than on top, and long gloves join them and conceal the arm. The most singular feature of this costume is the coiffure, which consists of an enormous three-cornered edifice of satin, lace, and jewels, stretching out on each side far beyond the width of the figure, and standing up in a point in front. The hair is turned back from the forehead, and hangs in a very long plait which the fair one carries over one arm. Fancy such a figure promenading Broadway!
After being the mode for a full half a century, hoops were discarded. Only, however, to be revived in, if possible, greater extravagance than ever towards the close of the eighteenth century. Figure 13 represents a lady's Court Dress of 1796. Not content with it's natural enormity, the hoop skirt was at this time decorated with immense bows of ribbon, cords, tassels, wreaths of flowers, and long swathes of colored silks, hung and twisted about it in the most horrid taste.
"Good Queen Bess" was noted for her extravagant and extraordinary taste in matters of dress. She possessed costumes of all countries, and left at her death no less than three thousand habits or suits in her wardrobe. Her courtiers used to give her gowns, petticoats, kirtles, doublets, and mantles, mostly highly embroidered and adorned with jewels. Paul Hentzner, a German traveler, who paid a visit to the English Court when Elizabeth was still in her heyday, says:
"The Queen had in her car two pearls with very rich drops. She wore false hair, and that red; her neck was uncovered, and she had a necklace of exceeding fine jewels. Her gown was white silk, bordered with pearls the size of beans; and over it a mantle of flush silk shot with silver threads. Her train was very long. Instead of a chain she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels." This must have been before increasing years induced the Virgin Queen to favor the Elizabethan ruff and high collar concealing eyen the neck. As her charms decayed she grew more chary of their exhibition.
Ruffs were the leading enormity in the dress of this period. Elizabeth's were the most extravagant. But her courtiers all wore them. The Queen imported a starcher, "the substance called starch" being just then brought into use. Stubbs, the chief railer against the vanities of those days, says: "There is a certain liquid matter which they call starche, wherein the devil hath learned them to wash and dive their ruffs, which, being dry, will then stand stiff and inflexible about their necks." We read, too, of wire supports to make the ruffs stand out; of "three or four small ruffs placed under the master-devil ruff," "which was often loaded and adorned with gold and silver and needlework." Thus arranged these monstrous appendages expanded like wings as high as the head, or fell over the shoulders like flags, as shown in our sketches of courtiers of that period.
Several important toilet luxuries and conveniences were introduced in the time of Queen Bess. Sir Thomas Gresham first began to manufacture pins and ribbons during this reign. Knitted worsted stockings, too, were first made in England about the year I565, by a London apprentice named William Ryder, who, having seen some that came from Italy, imitated a pair exactly, and presented them to the Earl of Pembroke. Also, we find it written in Stowe's "Chronicle" that, "in the 2d yeere of Queen Elizabeth, her silk-woman, Mistress Montagu, presented her Majesty for a New-Yeere's gift a pair of black silk knit stockings," which she had made herself. So well did these please the Queen that she declared, according to Stowe, "Henceforth will I wear no more cloth hose"—that is to say, stockings of cloth sewed into shape.
Elizabeth had a passion for strange ornaments of embroidery work. She had a dress with lizards and all sorts of creeping things on it. There is a portrait of her wherein she wears a gown embroidered with serpents, birds, a sea-horse, a swan, and an ostrich; while in another portrait a spotted ermine crowned, the emblem of chastity, is embroidered upon her gown sleeve.
Figure 17 is from a portrait of Sir William Russell, one of Queen Elizabeth's most distinguished courtiers, and will give some idea of the style of dress among the gentlemen of the later part of her reign. In his immense ruff, his "pease-cod-bellied doublet" of thickly quilted black silk, slashed sleeves, showing a rich lace under-garment, Venetian hose, and stockings of finest yarn, the dandy of those days seems to have been an exceedingly stiff and ungainly figure. In Lord Howard of Effingham (Figure 16), another courtier of Elizabeth's, we see an example of the trunk hose and the sleeveless doublet, which were for a time the mode. A poet of the day speaks of
Sleeves were, while in the mode, a very recherche article of dress. They were made separate from the garment, and were often of great splendor. Among Elizabeth's wardrobe were "a pair of sleeves of sypers (Cyprus work), wrought with silver and black silk;" "a pair of sleeves of gold pulled out with lawn;" "a pair of sleeves of gold and silver knytt, cawle fashion;" and many more, each in a different style. Her father, Henry VIII., was also remarkable for his splendid sleeves. The portrait of the Earl of Surrey (Figure 18) will give the fair reader some idea of the ridiculous appearance of these sleeves upon gentlemen. This gallant is dressed in a suit of scarlet throughout, and must have presented a most surprisingly gorgeous spectacle as he walked out, rapier in hand, looking at least twice as broad as he was long.
Garters, also, were a most fashionable male ornament. They were worn externally below the knee, and became so expensive and yet so common a luxury that we read of men of mean rank wearing garters and shoe-roses of more than five pounds in value. They were made of gold and silver, satin and velvet, often deeply fringed with gold. Taylor, the water-poet, satirizes those who
The mode seems to have excited the envy of the fair sex. In one of Massinger's plays, a young lady, whose attendant has just supplied her with shoes, garters, fans, and roses, exclaims:
To which reasonable wish her attendant replies,
It is recorded at a later period, of the Queen of France, Anne of Austria, that she contrived to elude the jealous scrutiny of Cardinal Richelieu, and to send the Duke of Buckingham her own garter as a memorial.
With all the exposure of the bust permitted by fashion during the reign of the Virgin Queen, "the abomination of wearing short sleeves" failed to receive the countenance of England's fair. Indeed, for many years, "naked down from the elbows" was a fashion which was looked upon with horror and disgust-—a hint to our modern ball-room belles.
Ardent a devotee of fashion as was Elizabeth, she could not bear that her subjects should please themselves in the shape, size, and material of their attire. In no reign were so many sumptuary laws enacted. She decreed that no "great ruff should be worn; nor any white color in doublets or hosen; nor any facing of velvet in gowns, but by such as were of the bench. That no gentlemen should walk in the streets in their cloaks, but in gowns. That no hat, or curled or long hair be worn, nor any gowns but such as be of a sad color." All which to the contrary, the "common people," at whom these acts were leveled, were most unlawfully extravagant, causing the clergy great trouble of mind, and calling forth from the reformers of that age such devout tracts as "England's Vanity; or, the Voice of God against the monstrous sin of Pride in Dress and Apparel." In this little book the writer utters the following quaint denunciation:
"Ladies, shall I send you to the Royal Exchange, where a greater than an angel has kept open shop for these sixteen hundred years and more, and has incomparably the best choice of every thing you can ask for? And because he sells the best pennyworths, himself descends to call, ' What do you lack? what do you buy?' and advises you to buy of him. Lord, hast thou any mantoes for ladies, made after thine own fashion, which shall cover all their naked shoulders and breasts and necks, and adorn them all over? Where are they? Revelations, iii., 18, brings them forth. There they are, ladies; and cheap too, at your own price, and will wear forever; and with this good property, that they thoroughly prevent the shame of your nakedness from appearing; and if you stoutly pass away, and take them not with you, if there be a God in heaven, you'll pass naked into hell to all eternity!"
Among the numerous caprices of Dame Fashion, not the least strange is that in pursuance of which the shape, color, and quantity of the hair has been most curiously diversified. False hair was used by the ancients. The Emperor Commodus used a wig, which was first oiled, then powdered with gold. There is in the British Museum an ancient Theban wig, the curling and arranging of which would puzzle many a modern hair-dresser. After an existence of some thousands of years the hair still preserves the curl imparted to it by some unknown art of the Theban perruquier.
The reign of the peruke in Europe, as an article of fashion, began at the commencement of the seventeenth century. They were soon the rage, their ugliness, and the protests of fairtressed damsels and love-locked young beaux to the contrary, notwithstanding. The barbers, of course, hailed the innovation with delight; and it is related of one zealous perruquier that he hired his sign-painter to depict, with due pathos and expression of attitude and face, Absalom hanging by his hair in the tree, and David weeping beneath, while out of his mouth proceeded the legend—
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth it became the fashion for the gallants to comb their wigs in public, as a means of busying their hands.
The combs thus publicly displayed were of very large size, of ivory or tortoise-shell, curiosly chased and ornamented, and were carried in the pockets as constantly as the snuffbox. On the Mall, and in the boxes, the dandies walked and combed their perukes. There is a picture yet in existence of John, Duke of Marlborough, at his levee, in which his Grace appears dressed in a scarlet suit, with large white satin cuffs, and a very long white peruke, which he combs: while his valet stands behind him, adjusting the curls after the comb has passed through them.
Miason, who traveled in England in 1698, says of the gentlemen: "Their perruques and their habits were charged with powder, like millers, and their faces daubed with snuff." The muff, now so exclusively the property of the ladies, was then an indispensable article to the gentlemen. Tom Brown gives, in his "Letters from the Dead to the Living," the following description of the beaux of the early part of the eighteenth century: '' We met three flaming beaux of the first magnitude. One made a most magnificent figure: his periwig was large enough to have loaded a camel, and he bestowed upon it at least a bushel of powder I warrant you. His sword-knot dangled upon the ground, and his steinkirk, that was most agreeably colored with snuff from top to bottom, reached down to his waist; he carry'd his hat under his left arm, walk'd with both hands in the waistbands of his breeches, and his cane, that hung negligently down in a string from his right arm, trailed most harmoniously against the pebbles, while the master of it, tripping it nicely upon his toes, was humming to himself."
The costliness of wigs (£20 being a very common price) created a curious branch of robbery— a gang of London thieves devoting themselves to the stealing of perukes from the heads of their owners, and making the streets unsafe for the big-wigs after nightfall. The most ingenious mode of day robbery was for the thief to carry on his head, concealed in a basket, a smart lad, who, in passing through the crowd, would dexterously snatch from the head of its wearer and conceal the most attractive looking wig in the company. Also it was dangerous for any child, with a beautiful head of hair, to wander abroad, certain women being always upon the alert to entice such into out-of-the-way places aud there rob them of their locks.
Pepys, who was an amateur in wigs, wonders, naively, "what will be the fashion after the plague is done, as to periwigs, for nobody will dare to buy any haire for feare of the infection, that it had been cut off the heads of the people dead with the plague." But the fashion outlived even this blow, and an old writer pointedly says, that "Forty or fourscore pounds a year for periwigs, and ten to a poor chaplain to say grace to him that adores hair, is sufficient demonstration of the weakness of the brains they keep warm."
Wigs, as well as natural hair, were dyed; red being curiously enough the favorite color during Elizabeth's reign. The Virgin Queen herself possessed no less than eighty wigs, of various colors; and we may suppose that the broad-ruffled votaries of fashion of those days who were obliged, on account of the breadth and stiffness of their collars, to feed themselves with spoons two feet long, were not far behind their royal mistress in the matter of wigs. The ladies, as in duty bound, followed the example of their lords, and, as usual, so far exceeded the masculine absurdity, that in the course of two centuries the female fashionable head passed through some most extraordinary metamorphoses. The head-dress of the Third William's time —a specimen of which is given in Figure 22— compares oddly with that of a century and a half previous (see Figure 23); while the fashion of 1783, shown in Figure 24, copied from a French print of that year, is still more outre than either.
Such changes gave cause for the old poet's satire:
When wigs were changed from flowing to crisp locks the ladies perpetrated enormities of which Figures 25 and 26, on the preceding page, will give the reader a faint idea, and-in which the hair was disposed in rows of curls towering up, one above the other, to a tremendous height. On these followed the commode—an actual tower of true and false hair, rags, ribbons, feathers, powder, and pomatum, accompanying which was a head-dress of which the following comic summary is given in an old print of the last century:
Figures 27, 28, 29, 30, are fair examples of this towering monstrosity. So enormous were these "heads" that women of fashion were compelled to ride with them thrust out of the carriage-windows, or kneel down in the carriage to accommodate them within. The body of the vast edifice was formed of tow. Over this the hair was turned, and false hair added in great curls, bobs, and ties, all powdered in profusion; then hung all over with vulgarly large rows of pearls, or even glass beads. Above this came flowers, and the whole was surmounted by broad, silken bands and great ostrich feathers. The entire structure added about three feet to the lady's legitimate height, and caused the gentlemen to look like dwarfs beside their wives. Of course such an edifice was to be constructed only at a vast expense of time and labor, and could not lightly be disturbed. Heads, when properly dressed, "kept for three weeks." as the barbers quietly phrased it. To "keep" them longer necessitated the employment of numerous preparations sold and warranted to destroy the vermin which bred in the flour and pomatum so liberally used. "Directions for opening a three weeks' head," openly circulated in those days, should have been enough to disgust cleanly people with the fashion. Of course false hair was still in great demand; and we read of a young country girl, with fine locks, coming to London and selling her hair for fifty pounds (.$250)) with which sum as her dower she returned, pacified an obdurate father, and married his willing son.
What with the towers and trains of the ladies, the wigs and tight breeches of the gentlemen, and the stays worn by both sexes, locomotion in full dress must have been a matter of difficulty, while a departure from the erect position seems to have been an impossibility. At a ball given by an English royal Duke, "Lady H___ d" chanced to drop her handkerchief.
Having a bad cold, she needed it; but neither she nor her partner, a royal Duke, being dressed for stooping, they were obliged to ring for the servant to assist her ladyship's nose to a handkerchief.
Yet even these towers of flowers and feathers were preferable to the disgusting fashion which followed it, of piling garden stuff— such as carrots and parsnips—on the head. Here is an inventory of the contents of such a fashionable head as we just mentioned:
For a long time gray powder was the rage. This applied on black hair caused it to look blue, transforming young ladies for the time being into actual blues. Figure 31 is a sample of this head-dress. This is alluded to in the following graphic account of a fashionable lady's toilet for tho year 1759—just one hundred years ago:
So vast were the "towers" and so expanded the hoops that the doors of the French Queen's palace were forced to be made both higher and wider to admit herself and her ladies. The author of "The Enormous Abomination of the Hooped Petticoat,", has a description of a lady entering a room which will put sonve malicious persons in mind of experiences of the present day: "Suppose the fine lady entering a room; First enters, wriggling and sideling and edging in by degrees, two yards and a half of hoop; for as yet you see nothing else. Some time after appears the inhabitant of the garment herself; not with a full face, but in profile. Next, in due time, follows two yards and a half of hoop more; and now her whole person, with all its appurtenances, is actually arrived fully and completely in the room. She sits down: if it be upon a couch or squab, though the couch or squab be five yards long, her hoop takes up every inch of it, from one end to the other. If upon a chair, it is the same in effect; only the hoop is suspended in the air, without any thing else to rest upon."
The "heads" excited the satire of all the poets and poetasters of the age. They were compared to almost every disagreeable subject in nature; but no amount of fun affected the mode. The quick changes from one monstrous fashion to another more monstrous still, caused one to sing,
To shape and order the cumbrous "head" required the strength of a male hairdresser, whose labors are thus described by the author of "The New Bath Guide":
The strong scents which were universal toilet adjuncts from the time of Queen Bess down to the close of the last century, seem to have been necessities rather than luxuries. Cold water as a purifier was not much used in the cumbrous toilets of those days. To ladies who painted in red and white, as they did in the last century, an imprudent washing of the face would have been almost certain death. Lady Fortrose indeed killed herself by such a rashness, and several similar deaths are on record. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1741 confesses that "from my love of appearing clean, and conversing with the ladies, I am what people call a Beau." At Bath, the focus of every thing refined and fashionable during the early part of the last century, they never washed the uncarpeted floors of the apartments; but they were occasionally smeared over with a mixture of soot and small beer, which hid, or at any rate clouded, all unsightly accumulations.
Lest our fair readers think we give undue prominence to the fashionable absurdities of their sex, we must cite here one more extravagance in male attire, which seems to eclipse almost any thing to be laid to the fairer portion of creation. The Prince of Wales, who was afterward George IV., and whose wardrobe sold at auction, after his death, for the trifling sum of $45,000 (it was estimated to have cost $500,000), was the first to countenance buckskin breeches as an indispensable fashionable morning garment. This article was made to fit so close to tho person that, we read, the maker and a couple of assistants were usually required to aid at the ceremony of trying it on. In some instances it was actually suspended from the ceiling by machinery, and the wearer descended into it, endeavoring, partly by the influence of his natural gravity, and partly by the pullings and haulings of those around him, to get home into the shell prepared for him. The effect of three hours' work of this kind (and the task lasted that time) may be imagined, especially if it was in the summer time. To walk in them was a torture, and to get out of them no less; but the dandy submitted to all with the devotion of a new-made saint, and the imperturbable firmness of a martyr.
In conclusion, we come to bonnets—of which the varying shapes are so numerous that we can give only a few of the most remarkable.
The horned and peaked styles (Figure 32) were in vogue during the reigns of the Plantagenets but died out before Elizabeth's time. When the tower was the mode, a head-covering to correspond was a necessity. The balloon or hood (Figure 35) seems to have been rather graceful than otherwise. But it was soon driven out by the basket-shaped contrivance shown in Figure 37. This, heavy as it looks, was exceedingly light and fragile, composed chiefly of laces, gauze, wire, and ribbon, and intended to protect and shelter, and not weigh down, the immense head which it covered.
The three styles here presented in Figure 34 were all the rage at different periods, and all are more graceful than the cumbrous head-piece shown in Figure 33.
This was the height of the mode about 1768, and was—so says Stewart, a perruquier-author, in his Plocacosmos—thought a most graceful adornment! What taste!
But equally ungraceful and fashionable was the monstrous cap shown in Figure 36—a fact we should be loth to ask the reader to believe, were it not that our engraving is copied from an engraved likeness of the fair Mary Anne Robinson, the first love of that prince who was afterward George IV. One can scarcely imagine that a really beautiful woman would so disfigure herself. No wonder a pious rhymer of those days sang:
And yet, not one of the bonnets so ridiculed will seem more strange and outre to our small bonneted generation than will this specimen of the head covering which excited the budding vanity and enthusiasm of our mothers.
article source: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1858
Pundits have been making fun of fashion for as long as people have been adorning themselves. I can well imagine cavewomen cattily discussing the local belle, "Oh, my! Gertrude is using a FEMUR in her hair! It's much too large for her freakishly small head! I'm surprised that she can maintain her balance with that bone tottering and swaying in the wind. Speaking of balance, she's got her coconut-shell shoes on upside down again...!!"
PURE SNARK, 1858: "Follies of Fashion"
HOW strange is the origin of a fashion! The "abomination of wigs" was first adopted by a Duke of Anjou to conceal a personal defect! Charles the Seventh of France introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs. The absurdly long-pointed shoes—often two feet in length— were invented by Henry Plantagenet to cover a very large excrescence he had upon one of his feet. When Francis L was obliged to wear his hair short on account of a wound in the head, the crop became the prevailing fashion of his Court. Madame de Montespan invented the robe battante, or hooped skirt, to conceal an accident in her history; which, however, occurred at such regular periods that people soon began to guess the cause when they perceived the effect. Not least curious of all is the origin of the long-fashionable shade of yellow called Isabella. When Ostend was besieged by the Spaniards, the Infanta Isabella of Spain, in a fit of injudicious patriotism, made a solemn vow not to change her linen till the town was taken. Tho besieged, either not hearing this vow or else too rebellious to regard it, held out till time, which sullies every thing, and possibly perspiration, if, indeed, Infantas of Spain do perspire, brought her Royal Highness's linen to a color which needed a name. In a person of her rank it could not be dirty; and so it was called Isabella, became the fashionable loyal color, and was worn, so says the chronicler, "with honor by all, and with convenience by many"—making loyalty, so to speak, dirt cheap.
We have it on the best historical authority* that the present prominence of the nasal organ on the Israelitish face divine is owing, in great measure, to the fact that, at one time, when the propriety of abolishing that somewhat distinctive feature was in debate in the Israelitish camp, the tyrant Fashion came to its rescue. Here is the account of the transaction—not in Homeric verse, but as veracious as though it were:
"Says Aaron to Moses,
Let's cut off our noses;
Says Moses to Aaron,
"Tis the fashion to wear 'em."
The gentle reader will perceive (on reference to the first Jewish countenance he may meet) that the plea was found quite unanswerable.
What might have been the result had it been disregarded who can tell? 'Tis certain that very sad effects have ensued upon a failure to pay proper heed to the behests of the mighty potentate. Take, for instance, the Liliputian nation, who (as recorded by their veracious historian, Swift) declared war against the inhabitants of Blefuscu, solely because the latter refused to break their eggs at the same end which Fashion dictated to the former as the proper one for breakage. The Big-Endian rebellions cost the monarch of Liliput not less than forty first-rate ships of war, a multitude of smaller vessels (the war being chiefly maritime), and 30,000 of his best seamen and soldiers; while the loss of the Big-Endians—the rebels—was, rightly, much greater.
So Louis the Eleventh of Franco had the temerity to crop his hair and shave his beard at a time when Fashion dictated ambrosial locks and flowing beard. What was the consequence? His Queen, Eleanor of Acquitaine, properly disgusted at such contempt of appearances, rested not till she procured a divorce, and married the Count of Anjou, afterward King of England. Is it too much to suppose that the interminable wars which followed upon this alliance were brought about, primarily, by the injudicious conduct of King Louis?
Who will say, looking upon these and like facts, that Fashion is to be contemned; or that her changes are unworthy the historian's note or the philosopher's attention? As for the popular mind—that is, with its usual sagacity keenly alive to any thing relating to so important a subject as dress, as is at once proven by the common remark, in every body's mouth, of knowing a man by the style of his coat, or, as Captain Cuttle would put it, "by the cut of his jib."
First among fashionable follies—on the score of absurdity—come the trunk hose, which were thought indispensable about the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and which were, in fact, a sort of masculine counter-puff to the verdingale, which then first began to swell the fair proportions of feminine loveliness, taking the place of the hoop of our day. The coat is what the dandy of our times most prides himself on. From the time of Henry VIII of England, and for the three succeeding reigns, his breeches were the objects of a young man's chief solicitude. Figure 1, representing James the First of England in hunting costume, is taken from a book devoted to various fashionable methods of killing time, published in the year 1614. It will be seen that " the great, round, abominable breech,"- as it was styled, then tapered down to the knee, and was slashed all over, and covered with embroidery and lace. Stays were sometimes worn beneath the long-waisted doublets of the gentlemen, to keep them straight and confine them at the waist. In our illustration the King is evidently encased in whalebone.
It is related of a fast man of the time, that, on rising to conclude a visit of ceremony, he had the misfortune to damage his nether integuments by a protruding nail in his chair, so that by the time he gained the door the escape of bran was so rapid as to cause a state of complete collapse.
A law was made "against such as did so stuff their breeches to make them stand out; whereupon," says an ancient worthy, "when a certain prisoner (in these tymes) was accused for wearing such breeches contrary to law, he began to excuse himself of the offence, and endeavoured by little and little to discharge himself of that which he did weare within them; he drew out of his breeches a pair of sheets, two table-cloaths, ten napkins, four shirts, a brush, a glass, a combe, and night-caps, with other things of use, saying, 'Your worships may understand that because I have no safer a storehouse, these pockets do serve me for a roome to lay my goods in; and though it be a straight prison, yet it is a store-house big enough for them, for I have many things more yet of value within them.' And so his discharge was accepted and well laughed at; and they commanded him that he should not alter the furniture of his storehouse."
With such boots "straddling" was an ungraceful necessity. A buck of those days, who was probably not well up to the straddling dodge, complains that " one of the rowels of my silver spurs catched hold of the ruffle of my boot, which being Spanish leather, and not subject to tear, overthrew me!"
The love-lock worn by our beau caused an immense sensation among quiet, staid people. Mr. Prynne wrote against it a quarto volume, called "The Unloveliness of Love-locks," in which he quotes a nobleman who, having been scared from this vanity by a violent sickness, "did declare the love-lock to be but a cord of vanity by which he had given the devil hold fast to lead him at his pleasure; who would never resign his prey as long as he nourished this unlovely bush."
Patches, mentioned above as one of the decorations of our beau, were introduced about the middle of the seventeenth century. The fashion is said to have come from Arabia. Among Eastern nations a black mole is considered a "beauty spot," a fit theme for poetic raptures. Hence those to whom Nature had denied this boon endeavored to imitate it by means of black silk and paste. In England, however, the taste was arbitrary, and the excess to which it was carried during the reign of Queen Anne was as barbarous as comical. Pepys makes frequent mention of the mode in his "Diary," as: "My wife seemed very pretty to-day, it being the first time I had given her leave [!] to wear a black patch." And again: "May 5—To the Duke of York's Play-house: one thing of familiarity I observed in my Lady Castlemaine; she called to one of her women for a little patch off her face, and put it into her mouth and wetted it, and so clapped it upon her own, by the side of her mouth." .
When at its height the patching mania must have made curious havoc among the facial charms of the fair daughters of Eve. Various shapes were used. A satirical poet of 1658 says:
"Her patches are of every cut.
For pimples and for scars;
Here's all the wandering planets' signs,
And some of the fixed stars
Already gummed, to make them stick,
They need no other sky."
This lady's face (Figure 3) is from a portrait of a reigning beauty of those times, and may be considered a fair sample of the fashion. She lias a star and half-moon upon the cheek, a circular mark upon her chin, and—marvel of marvels, a coach, two coachmen and two horses with postillions upon her forehead!
Patches were even made a symbol of political allegiance—the ladies who favored the Tories patching the right side of the face, while those who adhered to the Whigs patched the left side. Mr. Spectator tells us that, "Whatever may be the motives of a few fantastical coquettes, who do not patch for the public good so much as for their own private advantage, it is certain there are several women of honor who patch out of principle, and with an eye to the interests of the country." And we learn farther that these ladies were very far above sacrificing the public welfare for the sake of any mere personal feeling, as, "in a late draught of marriage-articles, a lady has stipulated with her husband that, whatever his opinions are, she shall be at liberty to patch on which side she pleases."
Patches were absolutely requisite as ornamental toilet appendages even so late as 1766, but soon after went out of fashion. The women of Chili and Peru to this day affect the mode, but with them the black plasters are but little variegated in shape. A patch on each temple is thought a rare beautifier in some portions of Spanish South America.
"Half-wits and gamesters, and gay fops, whose tasks
Are daily to invade the dangerous masks."
During the latter half of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries vizard masks, covering the entire face, were worn by ladies when they rode out. They were suspended to the side by a string, as shown in Figure 5, copied from a print of 1743. When in use these masks were held by the teeth, by means of a round bead fastened on the inside.
John Durant Breval, who wrote a poem on "The Art of Dress," in 1717, claims for the hoop an English origin. He sings:
"When and from whence the Ruff at first was Drought,
Long, but in vain, have puz'ling Criticks sought
In after times, some future Bentley's care
Shall gravely mark the climate, and the year.
Bentley (great sage), who ne'er vouchsafes to write
But such important matters come to light
Queen Kate of Austrian Blood, Demure and Wise,
Swell'd the stiff-circle to a larger size,
And wore it as was then the Spanish mode,
For Female shoulders thought too great a Load.
Some Winters passed, and then Eliza sway'd.
Sworn Enemy to Rome, a wondrous Maid I
She turn'd out Popish modes, but kept in That,
And introduced, besides, the Steeple-hat;
Fein'd the huge Petticoat with Ribs of Whale,
And arm'd our mothers with a circling mail."
The shape and size of the hoop has undergone, at different times, remarkable changes. A writer of the last century says: "It (the hoop) has been known to expand and contract itself from the size of a butter-churn to the circumference of three hogsheads. At one time it was sloped from the waist in a pyramidal form; at another, it was bent upward like an inverted bow, by which the two angles, when squeezed upon both sides, almost came in contact with the ears; and again it is nearly oval in form, and scarce measures, from end to end, above twice the length of the wearer!" Figures 8 and 9 furnish samples of these styles, in sketches taken from contemporary prints.
The Spectator ceased not to make sport of the hoops of his day. We find there the petition of "one William Jingle, coach-maker and chair-maker of the liberty of Westminster," which states that for the service of ladies wearing hoop petticoats said Jingle "has built a round chair in form of a lantern, six yards and a half in circumference, with a stool in the centre of it; the said vehicle being so contrived as to receive the passenger by opening in two in the middle, and closing mathematically when she is seated." And farther, " that petitioner has also invented a coach for the reception of one lady only, who is to be let in at the top." And " that the said coach has been tried by a lady's woman, in one of these full petticoats, who was let down from a balcony and drawn up again by pulleys, to the great satisfaction of her lady and all who beheld her."
The Tattler reports the proceedings in a trial held by himself upon one of the hooped ones, who "was taken up as she went out of the puppet-show-some three nights ago." Having divested this young lady of her hooped garment, a jury of matrons brought her into the house. "I had before given directions for an engine of several legs, that could contract or open itself like the top of an umbrella, in order to place the petticoat upon it, by which means I might take a leisurely survey of it as it should appear in its proper dimensions. I directed the machine to be set upon the table, and dilated in such a manner as to show the garment in its utmost circumference; but my great hall was too narrow for the experiment, for before it was half unfolded it described so immoderate a circle that the lower part of it brushed upon my face as I sat in my chair of judicature. I then inquired for the person who belonged to the petticoat, and to my great surprise was directed to a very beautiful young damsel, with so pretty a face and shape that I bid her come out of the crowd, and seated her upon a little crock at my left hand.
"'My pretty maid,' said I, do you own yourself to have been the inhabitant of the garment before us?' I then ordered the
garment to be drawn up by a pulley to the top of my great hall, and afterward to be spread open by the engine it was placed upon, in such a manner that it formed a very splendid and ample canopy over our heads. I entered upon the whole cause with great satisfaction, as I sat under the shadow of it."
An instrument or appendage called "a pair of hips," was, as before said, the predecessor and also contemporary of the hoop. In 1710, a lady whose maid has run away, taking with her some of the recherche articles of her mistress's wardrobe, advertises the truant and the lost valuables. Among the latter are mentioned "four pairs of silk stockings, curiously darned (darned stockings being also then the rage), three pairs of fashionable eyebrows, two sets of ivory teeth, and one pair of box (wood) for common use, with two pairs of hips of newest fashion."
Figure 12 is from a print in a French work, date of 1727, and represents an Alsatian belle of that period. There is evidence in the manner in which her gown hangs that hoops were then the mode even in Alsace. The dress of this belle is very curious. Her robe appears to be of two different materials, half the petticoat being laid in very fine close plaits and the other half in larger plaits. The body is made with an immensely long pointed stomacher, trimmed with lace and jewels. Over it is a lace handkerchief with long pointed ends, apparently of black silk trimmed with black lace. The sleeves are full, puffed, short, and open, longer beneath than on top, and long gloves join them and conceal the arm. The most singular feature of this costume is the coiffure, which consists of an enormous three-cornered edifice of satin, lace, and jewels, stretching out on each side far beyond the width of the figure, and standing up in a point in front. The hair is turned back from the forehead, and hangs in a very long plait which the fair one carries over one arm. Fancy such a figure promenading Broadway!
After being the mode for a full half a century, hoops were discarded. Only, however, to be revived in, if possible, greater extravagance than ever towards the close of the eighteenth century. Figure 13 represents a lady's Court Dress of 1796. Not content with it's natural enormity, the hoop skirt was at this time decorated with immense bows of ribbon, cords, tassels, wreaths of flowers, and long swathes of colored silks, hung and twisted about it in the most horrid taste.
"Good Queen Bess" was noted for her extravagant and extraordinary taste in matters of dress. She possessed costumes of all countries, and left at her death no less than three thousand habits or suits in her wardrobe. Her courtiers used to give her gowns, petticoats, kirtles, doublets, and mantles, mostly highly embroidered and adorned with jewels. Paul Hentzner, a German traveler, who paid a visit to the English Court when Elizabeth was still in her heyday, says:
Several important toilet luxuries and conveniences were introduced in the time of Queen Bess. Sir Thomas Gresham first began to manufacture pins and ribbons during this reign. Knitted worsted stockings, too, were first made in England about the year I565, by a London apprentice named William Ryder, who, having seen some that came from Italy, imitated a pair exactly, and presented them to the Earl of Pembroke. Also, we find it written in Stowe's "Chronicle" that, "in the 2d yeere of Queen Elizabeth, her silk-woman, Mistress Montagu, presented her Majesty for a New-Yeere's gift a pair of black silk knit stockings," which she had made herself. So well did these please the Queen that she declared, according to Stowe, "Henceforth will I wear no more cloth hose"—that is to say, stockings of cloth sewed into shape.
Elizabeth had a passion for strange ornaments of embroidery work. She had a dress with lizards and all sorts of creeping things on it. There is a portrait of her wherein she wears a gown embroidered with serpents, birds, a sea-horse, a swan, and an ostrich; while in another portrait a spotted ermine crowned, the emblem of chastity, is embroidered upon her gown sleeve.
Figure 17 is from a portrait of Sir William Russell, one of Queen Elizabeth's most distinguished courtiers, and will give some idea of the style of dress among the gentlemen of the later part of her reign. In his immense ruff, his "pease-cod-bellied doublet" of thickly quilted black silk, slashed sleeves, showing a rich lace under-garment, Venetian hose, and stockings of finest yarn, the dandy of those days seems to have been an exceedingly stiff and ungainly figure. In Lord Howard of Effingham (Figure 16), another courtier of Elizabeth's, we see an example of the trunk hose and the sleeveless doublet, which were for a time the mode. A poet of the day speaks of
"A fair black coat with outen sleeve,
And buttoned the shoulder round about;
of Xxs a yard, as I beleeve,
And layd upon with parchment lace withoute."
" Wear a farm in shoe-strings edged with gold.
And spangled garters worth a copyhold."
"Would 'twere in the fashion
That the garters might be seen too!"
To which reasonable wish her attendant replies,
"Many ladies that know they have good legs, wish the same with you: Men that way have the advantage."
With all the exposure of the bust permitted by fashion during the reign of the Virgin Queen, "the abomination of wearing short sleeves" failed to receive the countenance of England's fair. Indeed, for many years, "naked down from the elbows" was a fashion which was looked upon with horror and disgust-—a hint to our modern ball-room belles.
Ardent a devotee of fashion as was Elizabeth, she could not bear that her subjects should please themselves in the shape, size, and material of their attire. In no reign were so many sumptuary laws enacted. She decreed that no "great ruff should be worn; nor any white color in doublets or hosen; nor any facing of velvet in gowns, but by such as were of the bench. That no gentlemen should walk in the streets in their cloaks, but in gowns. That no hat, or curled or long hair be worn, nor any gowns but such as be of a sad color." All which to the contrary, the "common people," at whom these acts were leveled, were most unlawfully extravagant, causing the clergy great trouble of mind, and calling forth from the reformers of that age such devout tracts as "England's Vanity; or, the Voice of God against the monstrous sin of Pride in Dress and Apparel." In this little book the writer utters the following quaint denunciation:
"Ladies, shall I send you to the Royal Exchange, where a greater than an angel has kept open shop for these sixteen hundred years and more, and has incomparably the best choice of every thing you can ask for? And because he sells the best pennyworths, himself descends to call, ' What do you lack? what do you buy?' and advises you to buy of him. Lord, hast thou any mantoes for ladies, made after thine own fashion, which shall cover all their naked shoulders and breasts and necks, and adorn them all over? Where are they? Revelations, iii., 18, brings them forth. There they are, ladies; and cheap too, at your own price, and will wear forever; and with this good property, that they thoroughly prevent the shame of your nakedness from appearing; and if you stoutly pass away, and take them not with you, if there be a God in heaven, you'll pass naked into hell to all eternity!"
Among the numerous caprices of Dame Fashion, not the least strange is that in pursuance of which the shape, color, and quantity of the hair has been most curiously diversified. False hair was used by the ancients. The Emperor Commodus used a wig, which was first oiled, then powdered with gold. There is in the British Museum an ancient Theban wig, the curling and arranging of which would puzzle many a modern hair-dresser. After an existence of some thousands of years the hair still preserves the curl imparted to it by some unknown art of the Theban perruquier.
The reign of the peruke in Europe, as an article of fashion, began at the commencement of the seventeenth century. They were soon the rage, their ugliness, and the protests of fairtressed damsels and love-locked young beaux to the contrary, notwithstanding. The barbers, of course, hailed the innovation with delight; and it is related of one zealous perruquier that he hired his sign-painter to depict, with due pathos and expression of attitude and face, Absalom hanging by his hair in the tree, and David weeping beneath, while out of his mouth proceeded the legend—
"Oh, Absalom! oh, Absalom!
Oh, Absalom, my son!
If thou hadst worn a periwig
Thou hadst not been undone."
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth it became the fashion for the gallants to comb their wigs in public, as a means of busying their hands.
"How we rejoiced to see 'em in our pit!
What difference methought there was
Betwixt a country gallant and a wit:
When you did order periwig with comb.
They only used four fingers and a thumb."
The costliness of wigs (£20 being a very common price) created a curious branch of robbery— a gang of London thieves devoting themselves to the stealing of perukes from the heads of their owners, and making the streets unsafe for the big-wigs after nightfall. The most ingenious mode of day robbery was for the thief to carry on his head, concealed in a basket, a smart lad, who, in passing through the crowd, would dexterously snatch from the head of its wearer and conceal the most attractive looking wig in the company. Also it was dangerous for any child, with a beautiful head of hair, to wander abroad, certain women being always upon the alert to entice such into out-of-the-way places aud there rob them of their locks.
Such changes gave cause for the old poet's satire:
"Now dress'd in a cap, now naked
in none;
Now loose in a mob, now close in
a Joan;
Without handkerchief now, and now
buried in ruff;
Now plain as a Quaker, now all of
a puff;
Now a shape in neat stays, now a
slattern in jumps;
Now high in French heels, now low
in your pumps;
Now monstrous in hoop, now trampish,
and walking.
With your petticoats clung to your heels like a manikin;
Like the cock on the tower, that shows you the
weather,
You are hardly the same for two days together."
"A cap like a bat
(Which was once a cravat),
Part gracefully platted and pinned is;
Part stuck upon gauze,
Resembles mackaws,
And all the fine birds of the Indies.
But above all the rest
A bold Amazon's crest
Waves nodding from shoulder to shoulder;
At once to surprise.
And to ravish all eyes,
To frighten and charm the beholder.
In short, head and feather,
And wig altogether,
With wonder and joy would delight ye;
Like the picture I've seen
Of th' adorable queen,
Of the beautiful, blest Otaheite.
Yet Miss at the rooms
Must beware of her plumes;
For If Vulcan her feather embraces,
Like poor Lady Laycock,
She'll burn like a haycock,
And roast all the Loves and the Graces."
Having a bad cold, she needed it; but neither she nor her partner, a royal Duke, being dressed for stooping, they were obliged to ring for the servant to assist her ladyship's nose to a handkerchief.
Yet even these towers of flowers and feathers were preferable to the disgusting fashion which followed it, of piling garden stuff— such as carrots and parsnips—on the head. Here is an inventory of the contents of such a fashionable head as we just mentioned:
"Sing her daub'd with white and red,
Sing her large terrific head.
Nor the many things disguise
That produce its mighty size;
And let nothing be forgot.
Carrot, turnips, and what not;
Curls and cushions for imprimis,
Wool and powder for the finis;
Lace and lappets, many a flag.
Many a party-colored rag,
Pendent from the head behind,
Floats and wantons in the wind."
"Hang a small bugle cap on, as big as a crown,
Snout it off with a flower, vulgo diet, a pompoon;
let your powder be gray, and braid up your hair,
Like the mane of a colt to be sold at a fair.
A short pair of jumps, half an ell from your chin,
To make you appear like one just lying-in;
Before, for your breast, pin a stomacher bib on,
Kngout it with curlets of silver and ribbon.
Your neck and your shoulders both naked should be,
Was it not for Vandyke, blown with cheveux-de-frize.
Let your gown be a sack, blue, yellow, or green,
And frizzle your elbows with ruffles sixteen;
Furl off your lawn apron with flounces in rows,
Puff and pucker up knots on your arms and your toes;
Make your petticoats short, that a hoop eight yards wide
May decently show how your garters are ty'd;
With fringes of knotting your dicky kabob,
On slippers of velvet, set gold a-la-daube.
But mount on French heels, when you go to a ball;
'Tis the fashion to totter, and show you can fall;
Throw modesty out from your manners and face,
A-la-mode de Francois, you're a bit for his Grace."
The "heads" excited the satire of all the poets and poetasters of the age. They were compared to almost every disagreeable subject in nature; but no amount of fun affected the mode. The quick changes from one monstrous fashion to another more monstrous still, caused one to sing,
"O let a wind-mill decorate the hair,
a wind-mill, apter emblem of the fair!
as every blast of air impels the vane,
So every blast of folly whirls their brain."
"And first at her porcupine head
he begins
to fumble and poke with his
irons and pins
Then fires all his crackers with
horrid grimace
and puffs his vile rocambol breath
in her face
Discharging a steam that the
devil would choke,
From paper, pomatum, from powder
and smoke;
The patient submits, and with due
resignation,
Prepares for her fate in the next operation!
When lo! on a sudden, a monster appears,
A horrible monster, to cover her ears;
What sign of the zodiac is it he bears?
Is it Taurus's tail, or the tete de
mouton,
Or the beard of the goat, that he
dares to put on?
'Tis a wig en vergette, that from Paris
was brought Une tite comme il faut, that the var-
let has bought
Of a beggar, whose head be has
shaved for a groat.
Now fixed to her head, does he friz-
zle and dab it;
'Tis a fore-top no more—'tis the skin
of a rabbit—
'Tis a muff—'tis a thing that by all
is confest,
Is in color and shape like a chaffinch's nest."
Lest our fair readers think we give undue prominence to the fashionable absurdities of their sex, we must cite here one more extravagance in male attire, which seems to eclipse almost any thing to be laid to the fairer portion of creation. The Prince of Wales, who was afterward George IV., and whose wardrobe sold at auction, after his death, for the trifling sum of $45,000 (it was estimated to have cost $500,000), was the first to countenance buckskin breeches as an indispensable fashionable morning garment. This article was made to fit so close to tho person that, we read, the maker and a couple of assistants were usually required to aid at the ceremony of trying it on. In some instances it was actually suspended from the ceiling by machinery, and the wearer descended into it, endeavoring, partly by the influence of his natural gravity, and partly by the pullings and haulings of those around him, to get home into the shell prepared for him. The effect of three hours' work of this kind (and the task lasted that time) may be imagined, especially if it was in the summer time. To walk in them was a torture, and to get out of them no less; but the dandy submitted to all with the devotion of a new-made saint, and the imperturbable firmness of a martyr.
In conclusion, we come to bonnets—of which the varying shapes are so numerous that we can give only a few of the most remarkable.
The three styles here presented in Figure 34 were all the rage at different periods, and all are more graceful than the cumbrous head-piece shown in Figure 33.
This was the height of the mode about 1768, and was—so says Stewart, a perruquier-author, in his Plocacosmos—thought a most graceful adornment! What taste!
"The pride of our females all bound'ry exceeds,
'Tis now quite the fashion to wear double heads.
Approaching this town to disburse heavenly treasure,
I passed by a head that would fill a strike -measure.
If I'd had that measure but close to my side,
I then should have had the experiment tried.
By sins a man's said to be covered all o'er.
With bruises and many a putrified sore:
From the sole of his foot to his crown they aspire
But the sins of a woman rise half a yard higher.'
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