Fashion Through the Ages

Why do we wear clothes?

Some say: for elegance and good manners; and others do not agree, for they believe that dress is for warmth — not, of course, in the summer season — but history's answer is neither the one nor the other...

The wearing of clothes has become a habit deep-rooted in mankind, so much so that we stand astounded at the sight of nakedness. This habit was begun by the people of the cold regions, because it was from those very regions that the civilizations first set out. But does the purpose of dress stop at this limit?...

We dress for occasions, or to display our personality — and this is an idea the men agree to. As for the aim of attracting the other sex through dress, that has become a general idea among the women.

Our fondness for clothes and our interest in them dwindle when we set them on the footing of covering the body alone, for they are in fact more than that: they are one of the manifestations of personality, and of the fluctuations of the psyche. Thomas Carlyle wrote of clothes, saying: A man's drift toward tailoring, or toward legislation, is no mere accident, but an obscure leaning of soul and mind. This writer set fashion on one level with legislation.

Beside that, fashion represents the nature of the age, and the leaning of the people that lived in that stretch of time; even the weave of the cloth, and the kind of garment, show forth the material traits of the age. Dress is the most eloquent tongue to speak of the time that embraced it.

There is a class of people who hate the fashions of the nineteenth century, with all their lines and pleats and lacing of the waist. And fashion moves

the past — so our congratulations on this new branch in the noble Jundi family tree; may the eyes of his honorable parents be gladdened by him.

Modern fashion moves in a new direction, in the twentieth century, to take its place among the rest of the ages.

Here is a museum, if the name is right, in which you may review, Madam, the fashions across a stretch of time. The flounce and the tight-laced waist are among the traits of the Cretan age; in the Byzantine age, ornament and embroidery in gold and silver spread over the garment; the splendor of the headdress shows itself in the Middle Ages; velvet cloth reigned in its use in the age of Henry VIII, and glitter prevailed generally in the days of Queen Elizabeth. And the days move on to the age of chivalry, in which the men let their hair hang loose and set about competing with one another in introducing 'lace' into their dress!!

It is half a dream, through which you pass in review, and it cannot come true; for fashions, even if they appear again in another time, must lose the stamp of their own age to come forth in a new frame.

And we return to this age, to see ornament shrinking, and the practical fabrics flooding the market.

After the French Revolution, fashion returned to simplicity, and excessive ornament was neglected; but the reaction came in the period that followed, when the dress swelled out until it needed something to prop up the two sides of the skirt, and metal rods had to be used to preserve its shape — so much so that it was difficult for two ladies to sit on a single seat. And how does that compare with the ladies of our own age, and their sitting at ease on the bench of a tram, for instance?

Clothes are tangible things; and however long time stretches over them, and however far the days advance with them... they remain alive, so long as they show forth history within their folds!