WHAT TO WEAR? 
BY 
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS, 
AUTHOR OF “ THE GATES AJAR.” 
“There’s nane ever feared that the truth should be heard, 
But they whaum the truth wad indict.” 
“ A glorious thing is prudence ; 
And they are useful friends 
Who never make beginnings 
Till they can see the ends. 
But give us now and then a man, 
That we may make him king, i 
Just to scorn the consequence, 
And just to do the thing.” 
BOSTON: 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
(late TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.) 
i873- Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, 
By ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
Boston : 
Stereotyped and Printed by Band, A very, & Co. CONTENTS. 
GORGONS, OR GRACES ? 6 
“DRESSED TO KILL” 16 
THE MORALE OF IT 24 
WHAT CAN WHS DO ABOUT IT ? 29 
AFTER-THOUGHTS 38 
OUR FASHION-PLATE 77 NOTE. 
The first four sections of this pamphlet are reprinted from 
the columns of “ The Independent,” as read in a single paper 
before the New-England Woman’s Club. WHAT TO WEAR? 
I. 
GORGONS, OR GRACES? 
Helvetius tells us of a lady and a parson who 
looked through a telescope at the moon. Having 
satisfied their thirst for knowledge, they reported to 
one another its results. 
“ I,” said the parson, “ saw grand cathedral spires.” 
“ But I,” said the lady, “ thought — I saw — a 
pair of lovers.” 
To turn the telescope of our thought upon any 
object which lies within the realm of legitimate dis- 
pute is perhaps to see in it only some such subtle 
reflection of our individual temperament, training, or 
desires. I doubt if there exists under the moon any 
matter for discussion about which more incoherent 
and noncohesive opinions are rife among people who 
ought to be able to arrive at some unity of perception 
5 6 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
and purpose, than about matters which concern the 
practical welfare of women. Among others, the study 
of that particular puzzle, the modes and morals of 
their dress, has been unusually unfortunate in its 
history. It swims in a lunar glamour, it suffers lunar 
eclipses, it rises and rests in lunar moods, it is at a 
lunar distance from our acquaintance. Is it a question 
of love-making ? Is it one of religious architecture ? 
Can it he more than a desperate attempt to express 
individual conclusions bravely, and to listen to them 
teachably ? 
There can be, I suppose, but two leading questions 
to be raised upon this subject: 
1. Is the character of woman’s dress such as to 
require regeneration ? And 
2. What are the practical means of regenerating 
it? 
To the first and simpler of these inquiries I am 
ready, for one, to answer with the promptness born 
of those convictions which rise upon the stepping- 
stones of our dead opinions to (at least self-) satisfac- 
tory things, that the present dress of woman is 
Bad Taste, 
Bad Hygiene, 
and 
Bad Morals. GORGOJVS, OR GRACES? 
I sat the other day in a street-car, opposite neigh- 
bor to a brown alpaca dress. It was a bright brown, 
bordering on the shades of butternut oil: it was a 
cheap stuff, flimsy and coarse. Upon this dress I 
counted ten bright, brown, cheap, and flimsy ruffles; 
twelve flimsy, cheap, brown, bright bows; and folds 
which faded into the “ vast abrupt ” of the uncleanly 
straw in which they dragged, beyond the reach of my 
arithmetical education. Over this dress an upper- 
dress of bright-green delaine fell cheerfully. The 
upper-dress was “ finished ” with four intricate black 
folds, and certain irrelevant black buttons in button- 
less locations, dotted hither and thither like spilled 
huckleberries on a grassy field. A gray garment of 
the cloak gernis surmounted this, fitted so closely as 
to reveal every “ charm ” of a high-shouldered, long- 
waisted, and flat-chested figure. The sleeves of this 
garment were wide, and exposed a bare, brown, bony 
wrist, surrounded with tumbled lace, clasped with a 
gutta-percha bracelet, and shrinking from the winter 
wind, which blew to the uncovered elbow sharply. 
About the neck of this robe were suspended a cherry- 
colored silk handkerchief, a necklace (presumably 
akin to the bracelet), a glass-bead cross, of the sort 
called “ crystal,” a fur tippet, a lace frill, and a velvet 
string. Gutta-percha earrings, whose pattern was a 8 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
study for a journey, depended a few inches above ; 
false curls fell about them, and became entangled 
with them occasionally, to the serious endangerment 
of the outer lobe of the owner’s ear; rows of false 
braids supervened, and the stuffing of “rats” pro- 
truded here and there. 
The whole was covered with a mansard-roof of 
black velvet, blue ribbon, pink roses, gray raspberries, 
bead fringe, “ imitation ” lace, and green feathers, 
edged with several inches of false ringlets sewed 
underneath the eaves, and dripping — fantastic icicles 
— upon the front which they adorned. Within this 
chaste combination of effects was a woman all of 
fifty-two years old; a Yankee woman,—long, lean, 
gaunt, red, grave. She carried a muff and two yards 
of white “ cloud.” When she rose, she tripped upon, 
her dress (which trailed the ground). When she left 
the car, she tripped upon her cloud ; the muff engaged 
her hands and her lace-bound, shivering wrists; at 
the car-door she tripped again; and tripping, still 
tripping, a ghastly parody of maiden playfulness, she 
tripped herself out of sight. 
The brother of this lady (a glance indicated the 
relationship) accompanied her. There were six feet 
of him : his elbows were sharp, his knees were crooked, 
the family gauntness sat upon his high cheekbones, GORGONS, OH GRACESf 
9 
the family redness on his neck, the family grimness 
on his every motion. Had they changed garments, 
but for the stubbed beard of the one and the lesser 
stature of the other, they would not have been easy 
of identification. The plain pattern and solid sub- 
stance of the man’s dress became him; the broad- 
brimmed hat softened the outline of the congenital 
cheeks, the dark severity of the mottled coat repelled 
attention from rather than attracted it to the inherited 
angularity; the freedom of his warmly-gloved hands 
and unimpeded limbs bestowed a comparative ease upon 
the native awkwardness. In his own clothes, the man 
was no Apollo; but a fair-looking, unnoticeable man. 
In his sister’s, he would have been a hag. Dressed 
upon the principle on which her brother dressed, the 
woman would have presented an appearance of com- 
fort, warmth, fitness, and good sense, which only posi- 
tive deformity can render otherwise than agreeable to 
the eye. In her own clothes, she was a Gorgon. 
A caricature ? I think hardly. Take the trouble 
to test it. You will find my Gorgon at the next 
street-corner, at every dry-goods counter, at any rail- 
way station. 
It is not in our drawing-rooms that we should look 
to judge of the intrinsic worth of any style of dress. 
The street-car is a truer crucible of its inherent value. 10 
WHAT TO WEAK? 
Oar poor Medusa was “fashionably dressed.” Lady 
Yere de Vere, upon the avenue, wears no smaller 
panniers, not a frill, a curl, a frizzle the less, or more; 
on occasions scarcely a quieter choice of color. The 
copy shows daubed a little beside the model; that is all. 
You may paint what seems to you a finished picture. 
Photograph it. How your blunders swarm into sight! 
Every inaccuracy of drawing, all disproportion of de- 
sign, each uneven stroke your false brush took, stares 
you in the face. “ A photograph is not a picture,” 
we are told. Perhaps not; hut the camera is a useful 
instrument, and it does us no harm to resort to it now 
and then. 
Beauty in dress, as in other arts, will, I fancy, estab- 
lish its birthright by the ease with which it adjusts 
itself to unbeautiful surroundings. The Highland 
plaid is not ungraceful on humble shoulders. The 
short skirt and little bonnet of the French peasant are 
not uncomely because the peasant wears them. The 
white silk neckerchief of the Quakeress can never 
become common nor unclean. 
The West End must go to the North End for its 
preachers, since we live in conditions under which the 
North End may come to the West End for its patterns, 
if it would study the character of its pretensions to 
artistic custom. GORGONS, OR GRACES? 
11 
The suggestion may justify my selection of Medusa 
as a representative of the existing modes of female 
attire. I think she is a representative as fair as can 
he found. 
Grace of outline, propriety of adjustment to per- 
sonal peculiarities, delicacy in selection of color, sim- 
plicity in choice of ornament, fitness to uses, and 
regard for the relations of quantity and quality, are 
each and all outraged in the toilet of Medusa. Grace, 
propriety, delicacy, simplicity, fitness, and proportion, 
are each and all outraged in the modes which Medusa 
apes. 
Surely it is one of the simplest laws of taste in 
dress, that it shall not attract undue attention from 
the wyearer to the worn. 
The Girl of the Period, sauntering before one down 
Broadway, is one panorama of awful surprises from top 
to toe. Her clothes characterize her. She never char- 
acterizes her clothes. She is upholstered, not orna- 
mented. She is bundled, not draped. She is 
puckered, not folded. She struts, she does not 
sweep. She has not one of the attributes of nature 
nor of proper art. She neither soothes the eye like 
a flower, nor pleases it like a picture. She wearies it 
like a kaleidoscope. She is a meaningless dazzle of 
broken effects. 12 
WHAT TO WEA1? 
Surely it is one of tlie requisites of a tasteful garb 
that the expression of effort to please shall he want- 
ing in it; that the mysteries of the toilet shall not 
he suggested by it; that the steps to its completion 
shall he knocked away like the sculptor’s ladder frc m 
the statue, and the mental force expended upon it he 
swept away out of sight like the chips on the studio 
floor. 
Who that is mathematically or metaphysically in- 
clined can meet a modislily-attired woman without a 
calculation of the hours expended upon the architec- 
ture of her dress, without a guess at the stitches in a 
hem, at the hems to a frill, at the frills to a skirt, at 
the skirts to a dress ; without dissecting the organi- 
zation of her chignon in the anatomy of melancholy ; 
without a morbid wonder if she wore her front friz to 
breakfast in her crimping-pins? 
“Any material object,” says Ruskin, “which can 
give us pleasure in the simple contemplation of its 
outward qualities, without any direct and definite ex- 
ertion of the intellect, I call in some way or in some 
degree beautiful.” It is painful to consider the “ ex- 
ertion of intellect” expended upon the contemplation 
of the modern belle. An exhaustive analysis of the 
law of excluded middle, an intelligent defence of the 
categorical imperative, a serious attack of the theory GORGONS, OR GRACESf 
13 
of evolution, might justify it. If “ exertion of intel- 
lect ” stands censor on the beauty of our costume, 
Heaven save the mark ! 
Surely it is a condition of taste in dress that its 
cost shall not be protruded upon the public notice. In 
a state of society in which it is not an uncommon 
event for women to pay twenty dollars a yard for their 
velvet, forty for their lace, three hundred for a walk- 
ing-suit to shop in, sixty for a bonnet, and a tolerably 
well-to-do man’s salary to a dressmaker, how inge- 
nious become their efforts to rival each other in the 
display of the wherewithal they have been clothed! 
To exist as an advertisement of her husband’s in- 
come, or her father’s generosity, has become a second 
nature to many a woman who must have undergone, 
one would say, some long and subtle process of degra- 
dation before she sunk so low, or grovelled so serenely. 
I conceive that it is use, and use alone, which leads 
one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion 
of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tol- 
erate, if for the sake of grace and fitness only, the 
styles of dress to which we are more or less conform- 
ing every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they 
will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of 
the Hottentot seem to-day. The dictum of our great- 
grandchildren upon, for instance, what has been 14 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
termed the “ Kangaroo ” style of dress will also con- 
tain new and severer elements of criticism than any 
which go to form our judgment upon fashions which 
repel us only because they are out of date. 
How endless our ingenuity in sowing the seeds of 
this criticism ! If we have a pretty foot, we wear our 
heels beneath our insteps, and cripple it. If we have 
abundant hair, we cover it with the hair of some un- 
cleanly dead grisette, or twine with it an Indian weed 
which is namelessly horrible, and which exposes the 
wearer to nameless horrors. If we have a pretty 
dress, we cut it up, we slash it off, we twist it hither, 
we snip it yon, we bolster it here, we stuff it there, 
we mutilate it everywhere. 
Apply to this practice, ever so loosely, the celebrated 
and time-honored Platonic theory, that beauty con- 
sists in “the perfect suitableness of means to their 
end” ! “This (the practice of trimming) is a blun- 
der in art,” says Charles Reade (from Plato to whom, 
the slip may be a little jerky, but the road is direct), 
“ no less universal than it is amazing, when one con- 
siders the amount of apparent thought the sex devotes 
to dress.” 
Charles Reade knows very little about women ; but 
he knows enough to know that he inflicted in these 
words a very large wound with a very small arrow. GORGONS, OR GRACES? 
15 
Indeed, the appearance of a tastefully attired wo- 
man on a fashionable promenade to-day reminds one, 
in its results, of the old Indian fable of the beautiful 
young god who appeared among a nation of hunch- 
backs. lie was saved from death, we are told, “ only 
by the ingenuity of one who had seen other men,” 
and who suggested that they should repair to the 
temple to “ thank the gods that Heaven had, at least, 
bestowed upon them the gift of beauty.” 
For myself, I confess that I never feel thoroughly 
ashamed of being a woman, except in glancing over a 
large, promiscuous, assembly, and contrasting the com- 
parative simplicity, solidity, elegance, and good sense 
of a man’s apparel with the affectation, the flimsiness, 
the tawdriness, the ugliness, and the imbecility of a 
woman’s. For her mental and moral deficiencies, my 
heart is filled with a great compassion and prompt 
excuse. Over her physical inferiority, I mourn not as 
one without hope. When I consider the pass to 
which she has brought the one sole science of which 
she is supposed to he yet mistress, my heart misgives 
me down to the roots of every hope I cherish for her. II. 
“DRESSED TO KILL.” 
The enormities of a woman’s dress, haying done 
their hest to deform her body, will very naturally do 
their bravest to destroy it. 
So far and so fast has this work proceeded, that the 
scholarly physician invited to address the New Eng- 
land Club upon woman’s physical fitness to be, to do, 
or to suffer, can find, in the realm of his cultivated 
thought, no more grateful or graceful thing to tell 
you, educated, thinking ladies, known to be hopeful 
of woman’s future, trustfully anxious for her higher 
development, and absorbed in elevating her actual 
condition, than that your hopes are moonbeams, your 
anxious trust the diversion of overwrought credulity, 
your absorption in your work the blind enthusiasm 
of ignorance; that woman’s constitution, being sub- 
ject to peculiar conditions, must forever forbid her 
keeping pace with her brother or her husband in in- “ DRESSED TO KILL.” 
17 
tellectual culture, and entirely negative the question 
of her industrial success or existence. So low has 
the clinical ideal of woman fallen! So dark are the 
doctor’s spectacles ! So great and growing the phys- 
ical disability, at least of American women ! 
If there were no other cause (and their name is 
legion) to account for the feeble physiques and pre- 
vailing ailments of the present generation of women, I 
believe that their present modes of dress alone would 
explain the mystery nearly all. That a woman 
wears a Massed * dress and a long skirt is enough, in 
itself considered, to make an invalid of her under 
favorable conditions, and sure to do so under disad- 
vantageous ones. 
I put this assertion strongly because I feel and 
believe it in the strongest manner. 
You will remind her of our grandmothers, — the 
fabulous grandmothers, the healthy, wealthy, and wise, 
— they who scrubbed floors, did the family washing, 
wove carpets, spun their husbands’ coats, and brought 
up fourteen children, in biassed waists and long skirts. 
I reply that it is because they scrubbed floors, did the 
washing, wove the carpets, spun the coats, and because 
they brought up fourteen children, — and because 
they did this, and the time faileth me to tell what 
* By this, is meant what women call a “ plain waist.” 18 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
else, in long skirts and biassed dresses tliat American 
girls are what tliey are to-day, — pallid, puny, under- 
sized, undersouled, devoured by the backache, the 
headache, the heartache, a dark puzzle to the physiol- 
ogist who undertakes their present relief, a sad prob- 
lem to the political economist who looks to the future 
ideal society, the mothers of which they will be. 
There is a grim wealth of tragedy in the terse 
popular phrase descriptive of a fashionably-attired 
woman. It has ceased to be a metaphor that she is 
“ dressed to kill.” 
“ Six new diseases,” we are told, “ have come into 
existence with the styles of dress which require the 
wearing of multitudinous and heavy skirts.” 
Indeed, I wonder that there are not sixty. I won- 
der that women sustain, in even the wretched and 
disheartening fashion that they do, the strain and 
burden of their clothing. I wonder that any of us 
are left with unimpaired vitality for the pursuance of 
self-culture, for the prosecution of our business, for 
the rearing, care, and support of our families, for the 
whirling of the wheels within wheels of social duties 
which devolve dizzily upon us, till “the whip of the 
sky” has ceased to lash us into the struggle for exist- 
ence. No doctrine but the doctrine of the “ Survival 
of the Fittest ” will touch the problem. We are of “DRESSED TO KILL.” 
19 
tougher stuff than our brothers, or we should have 
sunk in our shackles long ago. It was well said by 
one of your own members, “ Whenever I discuss this 
subject with the ‘ unawakened,’ I resort to the simple 
inquiry, Could your father or your husband live in 
your clothes ? Could he walk down town on a rainy 
day in your skirts ? Could he conduct his business 
and support his family in your corsets? Could he 
prosecute ‘ a course of study ’ in your chignon ? ” 
The prompt and ringing No 1 of the only possible 
answer is startling and suggestive. The muscular 
masculine physique could not endure the conventional 
burdens which the nervous feminine organization sup- 
ports. The man would have yielded and sunk, where 
the woman has struggled and climbed. 
I lay especial stress upon the close waist and long 
skirt as blunders in the methods of attire incumbent 
upon women, because, when I consider the smoothness 
of surface which a fitted waist involves, thereby requir- 
ing that strait-jacket, — worthy of the invention of 
an Alva, — the corset, for its proper effect; when a 
woman whom I know puts on a basque-waist such as 
she wore five years ago (like all women, she “ never 
wore tight dresses ! ”), and feels her lungs contract and 
ache, and her breath come in uneasy gasps, and her 
arms, confined by solid seams, refuse to rise to the 20 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
height of a horse-car strap or a lifted curtain-tassel, 
and the whole system shrink and cramp itself to fit 
the unnatural restriction; when I see women stay 
indoors the entire forenoon because their morning- 
dresses trail the ground a half a yard, and indoors all 
the afternoon because there comes up a shower, and 
the walking-dress will soak and drabble all or nearly 
all of that; or when I see the “working-woman” 
standing at the counter or at the teacher’s desk, from 
day to dark, in the drenched boots and damp stock- 
ings which her muddy skirts, flapping from side to 
side, have compelled her to endure ; when I see her, 
a few weeks thereafter, going to Dr. Clarke for treat- 
ment, as a consequence ; when I find, after the most 
patient experiment, that, in spite of stout rubbers, 
waterproof gaiters, and dress-skirt three or four inches 
from the ground, an “ out-of-door girl ” is compelled 
to a general change of clothing each individual time 
that she returns from her daily walks in the summer 
rain; when I see a woman climbing up stairs with 
her baby in one arm, and its bowl of bread and milk 
in the other, and see her tripping on her dress at 
every stair (if, indeed, baby, bowl, bread, milk, and 
mother do not go down in universal chaos, it is only 
from the effects of long skill and experience on the 
part of the mother in performing that acrobatic feat) ; "DRESSED TO KILL ” 
21 
when physicians tell me what fearful jars and strains 
these sudden jerks of the body from stumbling on the 
dress-hem impose upon a woman’s intricate organism, 
and how much less injurious to her a direct fall would 
be than this start and rebound of nerve and muscle, 
and how the strongest man would suffer from such 
accidents; and when they further assure me of the 
amount of calculable injury wrought upon our sex 
by the weight of skirting brought upon the hips, and 
by thus making the seat of all the vital energies the 
pivot of motion and centre of endurance; when I see 
women’s skirts, the shortest of them, lying inches 
deep along the foul floors, which man, in delicate ap- 
preciation of our concessions to his fancy in such 
respects, has inundated with tobacco-juice, and from 
which she sweeps up and carries to her home the 
germs of stealthy pestilences; when I see a ruddy, 
romping school-girl in her first long dress, beginning 
to avoid coasting on her double-runner, or afraid of the 
stonewalls in the blueberry-fields, or standing aloof 
from the game of base-ball, or turning sadly away 
from the ladder which her brother is climbing to the 
cherry-tree, or lingering for him to assist her over the 
gunwale of a boat; when I read of the sinking of 
steamers at sea, with “nearly all the women and chil- 
dren on board,” and the accompanying comments, 22 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
“ Every effort was made to assist the women up the 
masts and out of danger till help arrived, hut they 
could not climb, and we were forced to leave them to 
their fate; ” or when I hear the wail with which a 
million lips take up the light words of the loafer 
on the Portland wharf, when the survivors of the 
“Atlantic” filed past him, “Not a woman among 
them all! My God!”* — when I consider these 
things, I feel that I have ceased to deal with blun- 
ders in dress, and have entered the category of crimes. 
We should not overlook the minor sins in our con- 
fession, — such as the heating of the head with false 
hair, the distortion of the hands and feet with tight 
leather, the scantiness of warm underwear, the exclu- 
sion of heaven’s air and light (as well as freckles) 
from the face by musty veils, exposure to the ague in 
winter and sunstroke in summer, and to the feverish 
heat of public assemblies, at all times induced by 
those mountains of mystery which we term hats. 
Nor can we over-estimate the mischief brought upon 
our sex by habitual attention to the making and 
mending, to the fashioning and refashioning, of our 
* It is not to be supposed that women properly dressed from infan- 
cy, and acquiring the freedom and courage which a proper mode of 
dress imparts, would have met such a death, in such a wholesale man- 
ner. “ DKESSED TO KILL.” 
23 
clothes. Much sewing is a weariness to the flesh, and 
of making many garments there is no end. 
A long train of doleful diseases follows upon the 
confinement of women to the needle or the treadle, 
as any thoughtful physician of the sewing sex can 
testify. For the one stitch necessary to keep soul 
and body together, probably twenty go in these days 
to frill and flounce them, to ruffle and tuck them, to 
embroider and braid them, till so much of soul is 
stitched into the body, and so much of body into soul, 
that the task of indicating which is which becomes a 
prize-problem to the most studious mind. 
u I spent one hundred hours,” said an educated and 
cultivated lady recently — and said it without a blush 
of shame or a tremor of self-depreciation — “I spent 
just one hundred hours in embroidering my winter 
suit. I could not afford to have it done. I took it 
up from time to time. It took me a hundred hours.” 
One hundred hours ! One could almost learn a 
language, or make the acquaintance of a science, or 
apprentice one’s self to a business, or nurse a con- 
sumptive to the end of her sufferings, or save a soul, 
in one hundred well-selected hours. One — hundred 
— hours! III. 
THE MORALE OF IT. 
Said one of our leading humorous poets once, 
with all of the earnestness and something of the sad- 
ness characteristic of humorists in non-professional 
life: “ I am puzzled about this matter of a woman’s 
dress. Sometimes I think the time will come when 
the morale of it will undergo a complete transforma- 
tion. Sometimes I think there is something in human 
nature which requires one sex to array itself solely 
with a view to the attraction of the opposite one. 
But that is a pity — a pity ! We men are a coarse 
race.” 
In one of those letters from obscure strangers in 
which one is apt to find one’s most stirring inspira- 
tions and most soothing comprehensions, and in which 
one is never surprised to detect one’s own best thoughts 
or most daring pirouettes of fancy anticipated with a 
directness which seems to create one a plagiarist in THE MOIIALE OF IT. 
25 
the use of them, I remember having been struck, a 
year or two since, with these words : “ I believe that 
the enormities of female attire have now reached a 
point to which it is not morally right for a conscien- 
tious woman to conform.” 
It seems to me that in these two remarks we have 
the Dress Reform Question in a beechnut-shell. 
'Woman was made for man. Heaven gifted her 
with peculiar graces and beauties of person for his 
attraction. She has always cultivated them with an 
especial view to exerting this attraction. Devotion 
to the art of dress has been with her hitherto a sexual 
duty. The scented baths of the harem, the square 
corsage of the Louis Quatorze Court, the short-waisted 
dresses of our grandmothers, the bare neck and arms 
of your little daughter at the dancing party last week, 
mean the same thing. 
In the natural pursuance of the interest which 
exists between the sexes, the personal decoration of 
the woman shall receive an unnatural and degrading 
culture. This is the principle, — as old as Eve, as 
subtle as the serpent, as strong as life, as sad as 
death. 
Has the world arrived at that stage of growth, or 
the principle itself at that point of decay, at which it 
is no longer “ morally right ” ? 26 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
This is the question. 
Whether the naturalist has an argument for us 
upon this point, when lie reminds us that throughout 
the animal world it is the male who is endowed with 
peculiar graces, which he cultivates for the criticism 
and hoped approval of the female, is a query, though 
not to our present, to some good purpose. However this 
may he, the sexual theory of dress has obtained a kind 
of existence and found a sort of favor which require defi- 
nite attention and definite (if any) opposition. Have 
not the most anxious and earnest of us blundered in at- 
tacking the conclusions of this theory, to the neglect of 
the premises? We have mistaken the outpost for the 
enemy, the skirmish for the battle. We have railed at 
frills and flounces, we have written columns at trains 
and earrings, we have exhausted breath in denouncing 
five-thousand-dollar shawls and decollete dresses ; and 
“ lovely woman ” has only added a ruffle to our every 
word, a jewel to our every line, deducted from the top 
of her dress and added to the bottom, with one to 
carry, for every spasm of our reproof, exhortation, 
persuasion. 
Perhaps, to take an historical view of the matter, a 
Hew York belle may have gained something upon 
Cleopatra in respect to the simple decencies of dress. 
How much may he a fair inquiry. THE MORALE OF IT. 
27 
Why does a man wear a linen collar and a cloth 
coat, and his wife wear corsets and a muslin waist 
with low linings ? 
Why does he clothe himself in flannel from head 
to foot and neck to wrist, and her under (if not her 
outer) clothing require that she hare her neck and 
arms to the freezing but “becoming” caress of Valen- 
ciennes edging on a winter’s day ? 
Let us ask a few of these questions, even if we must 
answer them by propounding others. We are Yankee 
women ; and that is the only way, I suppose, that 
Yankees learn any thing. For one, I do not believe 
that there is any rational answer to be found to them, 
nor that there is any explanation of the facts which 
suggest them but the one which we have supposed. 
Of what other principle is a fashionable “full-dress” 
(the satire of the term!) an outgrowth? What 
else does a square neck signify? Why other- 
wise did one of our recent modes lead (supposa- 
bly) well-bred and modest school-girls to traverse the 
streets and horse-cars with a drapery sleeve, baring 
their arms nearly to the arm-pit ? And another not 
only cut out the necks of their dresses so as to expose 
the beautiful young flesh freely, but fasten a shining 
locket thereon, to call attention to its grace and re- 
lieve its whiteness? 28 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
That a modest woman will attire herself in an im- 
modest style does not purify or dignify the st}de. It 
only proves how ignorant a good woman can he. 
It falls far short of the target to reply with the old 
reproving proverb, “ Iloni soit qui mal y pense.” 
There are intricate moral digressions of simple points 
in which it is a shame to that mature intelligence 
which does not “evil think.” We must take things 
as they are, human nature as we find it. We live in 
a diseased world. Our simplest experiments at life 
are pathological at best. 
Not to enter into the details of a mournful matter, 
for which private study is more fitting than public 
dissection, it seems as if the simple fact that the 
changing styles of a pure woman’s dress, the civilized 
world over, have been, for years now many enough to 
shame us to the soul, dictated by the corrupt imagina- 
tions and polluted ingenuity of French harlots, were 
enough to shock a thoughtful woman into asking, 
How shall these things he ? Can the hitter fountain 
send out sweet waters? the poisoned tree bear heal- 
ing fruit? Is that system of things right which 
binds a woman’s life to the gospel of self-adornment, 
and which regulates that adornment by such a deca- 
logue ? IV. 
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? 
To incorporate with one’s active convictions such 
views of the character of female attire is half the 
battle; hut it is only half. 
Most of us are more or less aware of the need of 
reform in this direction ; hut perhaps none of us can 
confidently see a rod before us through the fog which 
inwraps the way marks by which the reform is to be 
effected. 
For one thing, the average woman, on whose 
suffrages we must depend for all reforming force, is 
probably contented with the principles upon which 
her sex dresses, and, for the most part, with their 
methods of execution. Clumsiness of detail may 
annoy her, for the average women is no fool; she 
may lose her temper over a sasli-end now and then ; 
she is at times, however gently put together, a veri- 
table vixen on the subject of hemming frills; her 30 
WHAT TO WE AT? 
anathemas of her drabbled dress-shirt amount to what 
has been termed an “ angel’s profanity,” on a sweet, 
serene, slushy, March morning. Yet with the plan 
upon which women adorn themselves, and of which 
the most patent absurdities which afflict the soul and 
body of her to the verge of revolt are hut the natural 
expression, she is, I think, wholly at peace. 
To add to the difficulty of dealing with her upon 
this or any kindred point, the average women is very 
much upon her guard to-day against encroachment 
upon her habits, or disturbance of her convictions. 
A dozen years ago she could he warily led into the 
atmosphere of healthy doubt, and surprised into newer 
if not better temperatures of thought. She is alert 
now, aroused. There is a surcharge of electricity in the 
air. While she breathes, she thinks, suspects. The 
old weather-records are safe and familiar. The sun 
rose and set; men married, and women were given in 
marriage; children were born, died, and gathered to 
their fathers; and the sky was calm. If thunder- 
storms crouch on the brow of the hill, whose fault may 
it he ? Yours, perhaps. Under your most reticent 
allusion to the ballot she discerns, at the least, open, 
atheism and covert free-love, if not an opium-fed 
baby, and a dinnerless and buttonless husband. 
Through your vaguest suggestion as to the healthful- 31 
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? 
ness of shoulder-straps, she sees herself walking up 
the aisle at church in the scantest of bloomers, and a 
stovepipe hat. Ah! She is as wise as a serpent; 
she is as harmless as a dove : she will nqt denounce 
you; she will only beware you. —^ 
Again, we are told that the love of personal adorn- 
ment is inherent in the feminine constitution, and 
desirably so ; that this involves a wider distinction be- 
tween the apparel of the sexes than mere social secu- 
rity requires ; that the native modesty of women will 
and must forbid the bridging of this distinction ; that 
harmony between the sexes requires that women 
cultivate the beautiful for beauty’s sake and their own ; 
that, though the American mother become an extinct 
race, the American girl must weight her hips, and curl 
her hair, and read the fashion-books. 
In these, as in all errors, there might be truth 
enough to take the nerve out of the arm that would 
strike them, often at an instant when a blow would 
shatter the amalgamate image, -and shiver the brass 
from the iron, the iron from the clay, and all from the 
silver and the gold. 
Again, we may bear about within our week-day 
creeds the assurance that we are conforming to an 
uncultivated, unliealthful, and immoral standard of 
action, and be checked at the very outset of an at- 32 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
tempt to elevate it, by a series of petty perplexities 
puzzling in proportion to tlieir littleness and as bur- 
densome as they are base. 
Our untrimmed dress may consign us to tbe sixtli 
story of tbe hotel. Our mountain-suit, worn upon 
Washington Street, would lodge us in the charge of 
the police. 
That it should be done is one matter: how to do 
it is quite another. 
Now, in the first place, nothing will be done until 
some considerable body of women shall agree upon 
what they wish and will to do. 
Mademoiselle may confine her creed to six frills; 
madame to five and a fold; I may succumb to my dress- 
maker upon the subject of overskirts ; you may oppose 
her successfully on principle and preference ; Maude 
will content herself with loosening her corset an inch 
or two ; and Mabel will conceive of herself as having 
conceded every thing to the Coming Woman, in refus- 
ing to follow the inane and ill-bred custom of drag- 
ging her walking-dress in the mud whenever the 
fashion so to do “ comes round” in turn. We are 
in Cimmerian darkness and disquiet upon the matter: 
we need light first, and organization immediately. 
Suppose that any such body of women, of cultivated 
intelligence, should propose to itself some such cate- 
chism as this: — WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT ITf 
33 
1. Are there any important characteristics of the 
actual which should he retained in the ideal feminine 
attire ? 
2. What are they ? 
3. What should he dispensed with ultimately ? 
4. What can he dispensed with immediately ? 
5. Is there any thing in the essential modesty of a 
woman which forbids her so fashioning her garments 
as to be able to enter many active, gymnastic kinds 
of trade or recreation, from which public opinion, as 
crystallized in her costume, now excludes her ? 
6. Does either the essential modesty of the femi- 
nine nature or the safety of society require that a wo- 
man wear drapery below the knee ? 
Suppose by starting with half a dozen such inqui- 
ries, such a body of women should multiply them at 
their leisure, and ramify them into reach of those de- 
tails which thwart the sex at the root of all improve- 
ment in its condition. 
Suppose that such a body of ladies — for instance the 
New England Club — should call into council with 
itself one hundred ladies of that degree and kind of 
social influence which weighs in such a matter, in 
each of the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Wash- 
ington, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and San Fran- 
cisco. Suppose that seven hundred, let us say per- 34 
WI1AT TO WEAli? 
haps a thousand women, duly scattered throughout 
the country, should agree upon certain changes in 
their dress, and pledge themselves to their adoption. 
Suppose that, acting independently of French modes 
and mode-making (for I am convinced that this re- 
form, if it ever comes about, will find its vantage- 
ground, with other emancipations, in America), we 
win the sympathy and command the prestige of our 
Republican Court, and that the leaders of fashion are 
let into the secret; that Mrs. Grant, for instance, were 
our president, and Madame Demorest our committee 
on design; that the Lady’s Books became our gos- 
pels, and the pattern pamphlets the tracts of our new 
dispensation ! Suppose, in short, that, by one subtle, 
strong coup d’etat, the thinking women of America 
could make it fashionable to dress like rational crea- 
tures ? 
Something of the nature of the American costume 
— the gymnasium dress, the beach suit, the Bloomer, 
call it what you will — must take the place of our 
present style of dress, before the higher life — moral, 
intellectual, political, social, or domestic — can ever 
begin for women. Many of us feel no more individual 
doubt of this than we do of seeing woman welcomed 
at the ballot-box or in the Christian pulpit. 
But two objections are urged against it, with which WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? 
we are all familiar. We are told that it is ungrace- 
ful ; and that women, so sensitive to the graces of life 
as to wear camels’ humps upon their hacks and 
market-gardens upon their heads, will never submit 
to it. We are told that it is immodest; and that 
women who go half-undressed to whirl the evening 
through in a young man’s arms in that delicate pas- 
time, the waltz, can never shock their finer natures so 
far as to sink to it. 
I should like the opinion of any candid artist as to 
the relative beauty of the sight of a group of fresh 
young school-girls in their gymnasium suits, and the 
same girls dressed for the promenade, an hour later; 
or even of an active woman of sixty, fern-hunting 
in her mountain dress, and the same woman in the 
fuss and feathers of her toilet at the hotel supper. 
I should like any anxious sister to watch for a while 
the perfect protection and delicacy of the short- 
skirted, full-trousered costume, as its little wearer 
leaps the bars and swings the ladders of her “ exer- 
cises,” or climbs the rocks that diversify her seashore 
rambles, and then to stand upon the corner of Wash- 
ington and Winter Streets upon a muddy day, and 
observe the shifts and exposures to which we are 
obliged to resort — every “ maid, wife, and widow ” of 
us — to keep our skirts above the flood and filth of the 
streets. WIIAT TO WEAR? 
It may justly be said tliat we cannot at one fell 
swoop impose such a style of dress upon the preju- 
dices of the public. Here, I fancy, has been our 
most serious mistake. Because we cannot turn the 
river, we have not dammed the brook ; because we 
cannot do every thing at once, we have not lifted a 
finger to do any thing at all. 
Suppose that we begin by shortening our skirts to 
a regulation-distance of from four to six inches from 
the ground ; that we dispense with the biassed waist 
and corset, and retain the plaited gamp, or little jacket, 
which have been so popular; that we hang every 
thing from the shoulders; and that we set ourselves 
humbly to study the “ grammar of ornament.” 
Would not those four points alone, if carefully con- 
sidered, and patiently, gracefully, connnancHngly 
insisted upon, effect a quiet opening in all due time 
for braver and better things? 
In leaving this study for a discussion, our own 
hearts must remind us of what we need no speaker to 
suggest, — the bearings of this question upon the 
responsibilities of Christian women. “ All other ob- 
jections to our habits of dress,” said an earnest wo- 
man, u seem to me to run into this : they are such 
absorbents of soul. The money, the strength, the 
time, the thought, the power of lofty purpose, of strong WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? 
37 
resolve, of great enactment, which they drain, should 
strike us dumb with shame. They are a waste of life ; 
and when you have said that, you have said all.” 
There is something piercingly significant to the 
Christian ear in the dreary ring of the worn-out 
phrase, the waste of life. No sadder metaphor is 
known to Christian speech. Across no drearier 
desert can the Christian vision fall. Sometimes, in 
listening to the undertone which creeps from that 
direction, I seem to hear the voice of one crying in 
the wilderness, Prepare ye here — even here — the 
way of the Lord ! So great a matter has a little fire 
kindled! So intricate and so appalling has been the 
injury wrought upon our sex by the sins and sorrows 
of our dress ! So intricate and appalling appears the 
process of its cure ! 
The little Chinese monster, grown from infancy 
in a pitcher, distorted into hideous mockery of natural 
proportions, changed into a thing human only because 
it is divine, might appeal to the instincts of the 
thoughtful observer with something of the quality 
and quantity of force with which the woman of 
fashion appeals to-day to the woman of God. y. 
AFTER THOUGHTS. 
I suppose that what one does not say on any given 
subject may be of as much importance to the 
subject as that which one says. Especially must 
this be true, when the habit of close prevision and 
revision, of attempting to meet every possible dispu- 
tant under all possible emergencies, and to forestall 
any probable misunderstanding \Jby all practicable 
precaution, which becomes such an occasion of earthly 
care and heavenly discipline to the writer, yields in 
part to the instinct of immediate persuasion which 
controls the speaker. 
Those views of the great need and peculiar claims 
of a dress reform which the opening sections of this 
pamphlet set forth have met, in connection with their 
previous appearance, with a kind of reception which 
has strengthened my belief in the growing interest 
felt in their subject, and has suggested to me that a AFTER T110UG7ITS. 
39 
few pages which shall treat of the objections with 
which they have been received may not come amiss 
either to reader or to author. 
These perhaps can be classified in four important 
points. 
1. a. The extravagance of woman’s dress has re- 
ceived insufficient attention, b. The extravagance 
of woman’s dress has been overrated. 
2. The inherent love of beauty calls for more notice 
than it has found. 
3. Upon the physiological questions involved, 
women require more minute enlightment. 
4. The actual concession to the desire of attracting 
men in the selection of costume has been exagger- 
ated. 
Perhaps the extravagant aspect of the dress ques- 
tion does not always fill its full importance in one’s 
mind, because it seems to be more easily adjustable 
than some others. Settle a few other points which 
logically precede it, and it will duly and logically 
settle itself. 
Wlieil women dress gracefully, they will not dress 
extravagantly, for extravagance is not grace; nor 
when healthfully, for health of body leads to health 
of soul; nor when modestly, for modesty shuns dis- 
play. While we break the greater law, the less can- 40 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
not be mended. As long as our principles of dress 
are vitally erroneous in more comprehensive directions, 
it will avail little to turn much force in this. Is it 
not beginning at the wrong end ? Is it not lihe 
trying to put out Vesuvius with a watering-pot? 
Extravagance, too, is a constitutionally relative 
term. Grace, health, and morals are absolute facts. 
My habits of life seem as extravagant to my wash- 
woman as the Prince Demidoff’s seem to me. Who 
shall decide among the doctors of the social system ? 
What standard of justifiable expenditure do we pos- 
sess ? 
Do we possess any at all but the Christian stand- 
ard ? But here again: What is the Christian stand- 
ard ? Is it fixed, or proportional ? Does it “ exist 
as substance, or as accident” ? Are there not as good 
Christians on the Milldam as are to be found in any or- 
thodox country parish ? I may have reason to suppose 
Miss Dickinson to be a benevolent Christian woman. 
Shall I question either her benevolence or her Chris- 
tianity, because she wears diamonds and gold-colored, 
lace-trimmed silk dresses ? I may not wear diamonds 
nor gold-colored dresses. I may not be inclined to 
think that the ideal woman or the ideal Christian will 
do so. But who made me a judge over Miss Dickin- 
son’s inherent right to eat diamonds, if she chose to, AFTER THOUGHTS. 
41 
and could afford it ? Has she, or has she not, such a 
right, in the nature of rights and wrongs ? 
Such questions as these puzzle us all. The whole 
system of Christian economics is as yet one vast 
interrogation point. 
But, after all, concede what we may to the uncer- 
tainties, does not the severe simplicity of the life of 
Christ strike our laxer moods on these subjects, now 
and then, with the infinite pathos and the subtle re- 
proach of a strain of minor music in a ballroom ? 
When we read that death by starvation in New-York 
City is a perfectly well-authenticated and not infre- 
quent fact, and turn a leaf and are told how the flow- 
ers at a bridal in that city cost two thousand dollars, 
or how the last new trotter went at private sale for 
forty thousand, does not the spirit of that consecrated 
Life seem to our better judgment wronged ? 
I think the most uncertain of us must feel, that, in 
the millennial life, individual conscience will rebel 
against a state of things in which the extremes of 
luxury and deprivation will be possible. 
This brings to mind another point in which the 
class of people who have the means, and use 
them, to live in the higher degrees of luxury, and 
who seem to derive thence something of the tropical 
disinclination to unpleasant convictions, apparently 42 
WHAT TO WEARf 
take great comfort. I refer to the employment of 
the needy classes in the manufacture of luxuries. 
By the employment of these classes, it is reasoned, 
the most unbounded personal expenditure is justifia- 
ble in those who have the means of such expenditure 
at their disposal. 
This is a doubtful view to take of a difficult 
matter: if it becomes the only view, a dangerous 
one, yet as plausible and perplexing a one as could 
he well selected. 
This is not the place, nor am I the person, nor are 
my tropical friends the people, to treat of the intri- 
cacies of the question in a satisfactory manner. 
Only so much as this seems to be clear enough to 
be clearly understood by us all. 
It is true that the easy life of the rich eases the 
life of the poor. It is true that the promotion of 
each new industry provides means of support for a 
new class of people. It is true that the extrava- 
gances of life are not altogether the thieves of life, 
hut largely support life. 
But better political economists than you or I will 
tell us that the profits on the manufacture of luxuries 
are divided with no more reference to the real needs 
of society than they are with reference to the A. B. 
C. F. M., or the Association for the help of Indigent AFTER THOU GUTS. 
43 
Ministers; and that certain kinds of industry are 
in themselves injurious to society at large ; and that 
duty lies not in the direction of their encouragement, 
but of their positive discouragement. 
It is true, dear madam, that half a dozen lace- 
makers may earn a living out of the lace you wear; 
but what a living ! Study the history of lace-mak- 
ing in England and France if you will know. You 
support the wholesale and retail dealers — the well- 
to-do u middle-men ” — by your custom. “ Support ” 
is a very large word to apply to the aid you grant the 
poor weaver at the other end of the long, light, 
dainty web which binds her wretchedness and your 
ease together. The rest of us have not the opportu- 
nities of the English Queen, who, with true Victorian 
tenderness, in pity of the destitution of the Devon 
lace-makers, had her wedding-dress made of their 
unfashionable fabric, and brought Iloniton lace into 
vogue at the stroke of a kindly thought. 
Are we sending to the tenders of the silk-worms, 
do you think, their fair profits on the brocade we buy 
to-morrow ? or to the miners their honest share of 
the great golden ciphers which represent the dia- 
monds on our dressing-tables ? 
Has the world’s “younger son” ever yet received 
the portion of goods which falletli to him ? Has his 44 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
elder brother ever jet meant in good faith that he 
should ? 
Certain kinds of manufacture are in themselves 
injurious to society: instance, the liquor, the opium, 
the tobacco, or the corset trade. Occasionally the 
world needs a glass of brandy, a cigar, a dose of mor- 
phine, or perhaps a corset; but most of us, I mean of 
“ us ” who are likely to read a paper on Dress-reform, 
would agree that the proportions of these manufac- 
tures are enormously beyond the admitted needs of 
society, and greatly to its general disadvantage, and 
that duty lies in the direction of their decided discour- 
agement. This, at least in respect to the first two 
branches, is the prevailing Christian sentiment. 
Yet a great many worthy and needy people are sup- 
ported by the tobacco, the liquor, the opium, and 
the corset trade. Shall we therefore encourage these 
trades to support these good people ? No ! for they 
are injurious to society at large. 
We may invent new and legitimate ones, but we 
shall not prop the old and perverted. 
With these, I class the trade in many of those 
luxuries which so disproportionately characterize the 
dress of women. The disproportion is of such a 
nature, and its effects upon women are so serious, as 
to place their present enormous manufacture among AFTER THOUGHTS. 
45 
the injurious industries of life. Art may require silk, 
lace, velvet, jewels, in their proper places. A Power 
to which art is subordinate, from which alone art 
receives its great commission, grants no passport 
to them in their existing shapes or with their existing 
claims. The “true woman” must reject their preten- 
sions, and remand them to their proper posts. The 
false extravagances of female apparel do as dark a 
work for the world to undo as the trade in false 
stimulants. You may ruin a human soul just as 
thoroughly with a piece of point-lace as with a glass 
of cognac. Nothing demands our graver care to-day 
than imperilled womanhood; and nothing imperils 
womanhood more to-day than that theory of exist- 
ence of which undue point-lace is the expression. 
I cannot, in my wildest moments, bring myself to 
feel that I am under any obligation to wear a liun- 
dred-dollar “ coronet ” of false hair, in order to sup- 
port the poor little uncleanly French girl who parted 
with it to buy her bread. It might be preferable to 
put the girl to box-making or to housework. 
The renovation of old industries, the invention of 
new, but never the encouragement of the wrong, 
shall let the light of truth upon our perplexed and 
groping efforts to set heaven and earth at harmony. 
It has seemed to me, however, necessary to our 46 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
purpose, to get face to face witli some intelligent esti- 
mate of the actual character and extent of female 
extravagance, before we place much value upon any 
unattested theory of its workings. I have therefore 
been at some pains to collect for these pages price- 
lists from the more extensive departments of trade 
in women’s wear. 
These are confined, for several reasons, very 
largely to Boston trade. An under-estimate, rather 
than one above par, will be thus formed of the habits 
of dressy American women; since New York is 
unquestionably far beyond (or behind) Boston in the 
style of expense adopted by its expensive society. 
This should be borne in mind, with a large margin 
for annotations. 
I desire very gratefully to acknowledge the cour- 
teous and generous response to my inquiries, which 
has been received from the different departments of 
trade to which I have applied. Several of these 
firms have kindly allowed me the use of their names, 
but others have preferred that the lists should appear 
without; and it has seemed better to withhold them 
all. It need only be said that the best and most 
reliable trade of the city is represented. 
The lists, fairly accompanied with the comments 
of the senders, shall speak for themselves. .AFTER THOUGHTS. 
47 
DRY-GOODS. 
Shawls. — Our most expensive are from $500 
to $750. It is very seldom that a shawl is sold 
over the former price. Very few are sold over 
$300. 
Laces. — For flounces, $30 to $40 per yard. Lace 
being used very rarely, occasionally for a wedding- 
dress. There are very, very few laces sold over $5 
per yard. Imitation laces are sold to a great extent. 
Silk dresses.—Very many made up at a cost of 
over $150 up to $250. A private letter from a 
member of this firm says, — 
“Judging from my experience, it is not the few 
wealthy people who purchase expensive merchandise, 
and can afford so to do, that are doing the foolish 
thing, but the middle and lower classes who do spend 
much more than they can afford to do. Commencing 
with those who earn the least, the domestics in pur 
houses, I think it would be safe to say that over one 
half they earn is spent on dress. Then, again, many 
persons with moderate incomes have a foolish idea 
that dress makes the man or woman. 
“ The wrhole importation * of dry-goods into the 
* It will be remembered that these figures are confined to 
imported goods. 48 
WIIAT TO WEAR? 
country last year was about six dollars to an inhabit- 
ant. You will see that the most economical would 
have difficulty to get on with this amount, including 
as it must all articles of linen in use. I think you 
will find the use of the most expensive articles in a 
few of the large cities, among the wealthy classes, who 
have the means, and who give employment by so 
doing. I think during the last five years there 
has been much less extravagance among the Ameri- 
can people. Ten years ago the great increase of 
paper money demoralized the people for the time 
being. ” 
Thread-lace covers for parasols, from $35 to $60. 
Embroidered underwear, as high as $150 a set. 
MILLIXEItY 
Flowers .... $1.00 per spray to $15.00 garlands. 
Fancy feathers ... 75 “ 15.00 each. 
Ostrich “ choice colors. 5.00 “ 20.00 “ 
“ “ black . . 3.00 “ 18.00 “ 
Ornaments in Jet, Steel, Sil- 
ver 75 “ 12.00 “ 
Gilt, Pearl, &c., &c. 
Real thread lace Veils . . 3.50 ' “ 25.00 “ 
“ Blonde Coiffures and 
Barbs . . . 5.00 “ 25.00 “ 
“ Black-thrcad Barbs . 50 “ 20.00 “ 
Straw and Chip Bonnets 
and Hats .... 2.00 “ 12.00 “ AFTER THOUGHTS. 
49 
Real Chantilly lace Net . $3.50 to $6.00 per yard. 
“ Blonde edge and trim- 
ming laces . . 50 “ 8.00 “ 
Ribbons .... 50 “ 2.50 “ 
Velvets .... 8.00 “ 20.00 “ 
Imported trimmed Bonnets and Hats from $45.00 to $65.00. 
“ In the sale of such goods, as to the proportion, 
there are more of the medium prices sold than of the 
highest or lowest.” 
FURS 
“We would say that single articles of fur, of the 
highest prices, are not worn now nearly as much as 
they were, say five years ago. In 1864, ’65, ’66, 
sales of single garments — the long cloak—were 
very frequent, at from $150 to $600. Occasional, at 
$600 to $1,000. We sold one once for $1,500. 
We often, in those years, sold muffs from $100 to 
$400; small collars, from $150 to $350. Ladies 
are now wearing trimmings to a great extent; and 
nothing is too costly and rare to be cut into strips for 
this purpose. We have furnished trimming costing 
as high as $50 per yard, and have seen eight to 
twelve yards used on a garment. We sold, this sea- 
son, a seal sack for $350 ; and, a month later, trimmed 
it with sea-otter costing $175 more. We think 
we could name ladies in this city who own, and keep 50 
WIIAT TO WEAR? 
in general use, from $1,000 to $2,000 worth of furs 
merely as dress-furs. We do not mean sleigh-robes, 
rugs, &c. Perhaps if we give you the items of such 
a “ set-out ” it may help you. 
Russian Sable, called also Siberian, muff . . . $300.00 
“ “ “ “ “ tippet or collar . 300.00 
Trimming to match, worn generally on black velvet, 
say eight yards 400.00 
Ermine, large cape or pelerine, to be worn to parties, &c. 150.00 
Muff, boa, cuffs 50.00 
Seal sack, mu f, boa, cap, gantlets .... 350 00 
Silver-Fox, muff and boa 300.00 
Eight to ten yards trimming, generally worn on silk 
or poplin 100.00 
“In addition to all these nice things, the same per- 
son is very likely to have one or two medium-priced 
sets. The most extravagant thing in this way that 
I ever heard of was a Russia-sable carriage-robe, 
made by a New-York house for a “petroleum prin- 
cess,” and costing $5,000. We made an ermine 
robe for a baby-carriage, for which we received more 
than $100. If you care for more explicit or special 
information, we will be glad to answer any questions.” 
HAIR. 
“In our class of custom, the proportion of more 
expensive sales to moderate or cheaper ones is nearly AFTER THOUGHTS. 
51 
two to one. The prices for a short hand, to he used 
for a coronet, range from $5 to $50. Then we 
make some special orders, extra long hair, or extra 
quantity or quality, from $50 to $75. These are 
ordinary colors. Extra colors, — ash colors we call 
them, — or the various shades of red hair, cost us 
twenty-five per cent more to import raw, and have 
to be charged in that proportion. 
“ Then the gray or white hair is altogether another 
matter, costing twice and three times as much as or- 
dinary colors. White hair, twenty-eight inches long, 
costs us from $80 to $ ounce ; and sometimes 
cannot he had at any price. We always make to or- 
der, as it is so difficult to match, and seldom make 
any thing less than $50, which would be a band for 
the back, and a coronet braid, both made of short 
hair, from fourteen to twenty inches long. 
“ We made an order a short time ago — a band for 
the back, coronet, some little puffs, and a seam (a 
kind of half-wig, very delicate) — which came to 
$255. It was nearly three-quarters white, however, 
and made of long hair. 
“ Long curls are worn a great deal; and nice ones 
cost from $5 to $15. Sets of curls, from $8 to $25, 
besides various other small articles, puffs, bows, 
crimps, &c. 52 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
“We import every thing direct, and so only keep 
the best class of goods.” 
JEWELEY 
“ In reply to your inquiries, we would say it is ex- 
tremely difficult to give correct prices without show- 
ing the goods. They would range somewhat as fol- 
lows : — 
Earrings, plated . . . $0.75 to $4.00 Av’ge sale, $2.00 
“ gold . . . 3.00 to 40.00 “ 12.00 
Brooches, plated . . . 0.75 to 4.00 “ 2.00 
“ gold . . . 3.00 to 40.00 “ 12.00 
Bracelets, plated'. . . 1.50 to 15.00 “ 3.00 
“ gold . . . 8.50 to 100.00 “ 15.00 
Watches, ladies’silver. . 15.00 to 30.00 “ 18.00 
“ “ gold . . 30.00 to 300.00 “ 75.00 
Chains, Leontine. . . 15.00 to 40.00 “ 25.00 
“ Opera . . . 40.00 to 125.00 * 60.00 
Rings, filled. . . . 0.75 to 5.00 “ 1.50 
“ solid .... 0.75 to 20.00 “ 5.00 
“ Pearl ' . . . 10 00 to 100.00 " 20.00 
“ Emerald . . . 15.00 to 500.00 “ 20.00 
“ Diamond . . . 15.00 to 1500.00 “ 150.00 
Necklaces, children’s . . 3.50 to 50.00 “ 7.50 
“ ladies’. . . 15.00 to 100.00 “ 35.00 
Charms .... 0.75 to 20.00 “ 3.00 
Crosses . . . 1.00 to 50 00 “ 5.00 
Lockets .... 3.00 to 75.00 “ 20.00 
Opera-glasses . . . 3.75 to 50.00 “ 10.00 
“ You will note that the preponderance of small or 
medium-priced sales reduces the average from what AFTER THOUGHTS. 
53 
it might be supposed to be, if the range of prices 
were alone considered.” 
To these figures may be added a few which are ob- 
tained from another source. 
For eleven months, ending Xov. 30,1872, the entire 
importation of 
Jewelry, and manufs. of gold and silver, was . $1,253,763.00 
Of precious stones 2,352,472.00 
Perfumery and cosmetics 974,795.00 
DRESSMAKING. 
In this department, the testimony runs in a some- 
what conversational but very pointed style, as 
follows : — 
“ I am happy to give you what help I can. In 
my opinion, fully half of the ladies whom you have 
in mind are led to extravagance in dress by the in- 
fluence of their husbands. This includes the class 
of people who have acquired sudden wealth without 
culture. The men desire their wives to be a kind of 
advertisement of their business success. They want 
them to dress as other ladies dress, who are of estab- 
lished social position. 
Then a class of women have an inherited love of 
laces. They get it from their mothers and grand- 
mothers. You can no more ignore it than you can 54 
WIIAT TO WEAR. 
love for pictures or statuary. It is tliere. You must 
do something with it. 
I must admit, that, in my business, I meet with a 
great many very shallow women. But I know a 
great many very lovely and strong in character. 
Well? And what will you have? Laces? A 
very common quality of lace is $30 per yard. I 
use a great deal of such lace. Are there none more 
expensive ? You shall liea^ 
One wedding I remember. I put point-lace on the 
bride’s mother’s dress. The lace cost, in Europe, 
$3,000. It was a rare pattern. It could be put into 
a box one inch in depth, and four inches square, it 
was so light. But that will be an heirloom in the 
family. 
I know of shawls in this city which cost from 
$1,500 to $2,000. 
I know of lace veils seventeen inches square, which 
are worth $75. 
A common price for silks for dresses would be 
$25 per yard. 
I have made a street costume of velvet, silk, and 
lace, which would come to $1,000. But perhaps 
that lady would wear that five years. 
Party dresses will run from $50 to $10,000. I 
have made dresses worth $10,000. The cost will be 
in trimming lace, artificial flowers, and diamonds. AFTER THOUGHTS. 
An average price (of my work) for a silk costume 
for the street (inclusive of materials) would be $600. 
Paris dresses vary from $500 to $2,000 a dress. 
More than half the ladies in the city who “ dress ” 
will have a hill with modistes in Paris. These 
are two classes: the rich who inherit wealth, and 
the “ shoddy ’’ rich. The old families, like the s 
and s and s, dress very plainly. Their ma- 
terial is costly, hut very plain. Just to see them 
about their business in a morning, you couldn’t tell 
them from any seamstress. 
Are the women who dress in the extremes of style 
and expense benevolent? I have been waiting fur 
you to ask me that question. Yes : I am glad to be 
able to say, Yes. They are benevolent women, as a 
class: some of them very much so. There is a great 
deal of quiet and secret benevolence among these 
ladies. 
I know of many instances of it which would sur- 
prise you. 
I do not think that the habits of women are more 
extravagant than those of men. Nor even their 
habits of dress. In the same class of people, the men 
do as extravagant things as the women. I know of 
gentlemen who will wear in the summer three and 
four fresh pairs of kid gloves a day. No ladj ever 56 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
wears more than one fresh pair a day, and many will 
wear them weeks ! 
I know gentlemen who make it a point to 
change their linen twice a day. 
What woman* ever smoked a $£ cigar? 
What woman ever gave $500, or even $15, for a 
meerschaum pipe ? 
In my opinion, women have been unjustly blamed 
for extravagance. That of the sexes is more equal 
than is supposed, at least in moneyed circles.” 
It may he added, that I have no personal opportu- 
nities of testing the figures which have been given 
in these several departments. The sources whence 
they have been obtained, however, are such as to 
place their accuracy and candor above occasion for 
investigation. 
The inherent love of beauty seems to be very much 
like the inherent love of home and domestic life. 
Women possess the one and the other. Men possess 
tlie one and the other. Whether women possess 
either or both to a greater extent than men remains, 
to my mind, yet to be proved. No creature on God’s 
earth is so much the creature of circumstance to-day 
* These questions are confined, we must suppose, to American 
women. AFTER THOUGHTS. 
57 
as woman. With no variety of discovered animal 
existence are we to-day as ill-acquainted as we are 
with that particular development of protoplasm which 
bears her name. 
Waiving this, however, as only adjoining our pres- 
ent investigation, and assuming, what is altogether 
probable, if, indeed, by the laws of analogy, “the pre- 
sumption amounteth not to certainty,” that the 
aesthetic principle, at least, is more largely wrought 
into the constitution of woman than into that of 
man, must we not admit as much as this at least to be 
true ? If the love of the beautiful in dress is peculiar 
in any degree to the feminine nature, it will assert 
itself without any assistance from other quarters. 
Just as with the love of home. The most ardent 
reformer has no expectation of eradicating this 
element in the womanly character. The most cau- 
tious conservative can trust nature to protect her own 
in this respect. If it is natural for women to wash 
the dishes, while their husbands vote, they will wash 
the dishes ; and no suffrage association on earth can 
call them away. If it is natural for them to go to 
the polls, they will go to the polls; and all the discus- 
sions in all the Monday’s ministers’ meetings in the 
country will not prevent them. So with the love of 
dress. Ho special pains will be needed to foster its 58 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
growth. Women are not in immediate danger of 
sacrificing their personal adornment to their personal 
culture or their higher usefulness. I have not the 
slightest fear that women will not remember what 
colors become them (if they ever knew) when they 
go to the ballot-box. It will be, I fancy, several years 
to come before the most devout young gospeller at 
the Easter service will forget which is the congrega- 
tion-side of her new bonnet. I cannot conjure a 
shade of alarm lest four out of five of the women who 
read these words should neglect a due attention to 
their summer wardrobe, for the sake of improving 
their minds. 
In that dim and blessed day when we have learned 
the alphabet of regard for either our soul’s or our 
body’s salvation in our costumes, when every first 
principle of grace, of health, and of modesty, is 
rigidly observed in its regulation, I risk the result 
with a cheerful confidence, if we are not agreeably 
attired, and am indeed quite ready to suppose that 
we shall present to the world’s eye a far more grace- 
ful solution of these three problems in the study of 
dress than our brothers are doing to-day, perhaps 
more so than any day’s tale will he likely to tell of 
them. 
Men have made a science of dress; women have AFTER THOUGHTS. 
59 
made a blunder of it: it remains for one or the 
other to make it an art. Most of us would be thor- 
oughly surprised, if not a little puzzled, should 
this consummation fail of its fulfilment at women’s 
hands. 
But, while we are forced to deny that the aesthetic 
element in question needs fertilizing, we must admit 
that it needs cultivating. The ground is rich. The 
root is hardy. The sun and the rain have not dele- 
gated their work to us. But the weeds grow rank, 
the trellises are beaten down, and the fair growth is 
blossoming itself to dishonored death in the weeds 
beneath our feet. 
We shall do well to remember that it is because our 
love of beauty needs culture, that some of these pro- 
posed changes in our costume have become imperative 
upon us. 
We cannot too often remind ourselves, that, if this 
feature in woman’s constitution depended upon our 
present modes of dress, for proof of its existence, we 
should be reduced to a profound skepticism of it, 
which, perhaps, would be a good thing for us, but 
which would come with something of the shock which 
the discovery of the mythical character of the north 
pole must be to a child who has grown from infancy 
under the impressive influence of the popular picture WIIAT TO WEAR? 
of that gigantic fishing-rod viewed as surmounted 
by the tank of a patent soda-fountain. 
It is because women should dress gracefully, that 
their present habits of attire require a thorough rev- 
olution. It is because, tried by every aesthetic, 
hygienic, and moral law, we are wearing ugly clothes, 
that we must invent and welcome pretty ones. 
But, further, I think we must allow, and be pre- 
pared contentedly to allow, that, whatever may be said 
of the past, and whatever may be predicted of the 
future, the absolute grace in dress cannot, in the pres- 
ent age, be attained by women or by men, consistent- 
ly with a due regard for its graver requisites. 
When Cornelia floated about her stately “ domestic 
duties ” in her flowing Homan robe ; when Cicero’s 
immortal eloquence was not hampered by a toga; 
or when Columbus discovered America in leg-o’- 
mutton sleeves, or Heloise moved softly as a lover’s 
thought to find a book for Abelard; when Mary 
Stuart could have a page for every train she wore, 
and Raleigh laid his velvet talma in the mud for 
Elizabeth’s royal stepping; or when the Lady of the 
Lake plied her dry and dainty little boat before Fitz 
James’s chasing eyes, or Miranda fluttered like a 
bird—as aimless and as happy — about the shore; 
or when Murrillo’s Mary shook off the clouds as the AFTER THOUGHTS. 
61 
dust of her feet; or when the Venus de Milo broke 
her arms,—the world was young. We are a little 
wiser now. Let us not regret if we pay something of 
the price of all wisdom, — that for every acquisition, 
an unconscious grace is lost. We have only to fancy 
the career of a Mary Livermore, a Henry Wilson, a 
John Bright, a Marie Zakrzewska, an Emily Eaitli- 
full, of any thoroughly representative man or woman 
of our day, as accomplished in the costumes which 
poets and artists have wrought into our ideals, to 
realize at once our limits and our privileges. We 
have only to contrast thoughtfully a convent of the 
sixteenth century with Michigan University to find 
ourselves contented with our restrictions. The age 
of the train and the toga was a patrician age. Our 
grand republican possibilities cannot struggle to the 
birth in its trammels. Our grave republican respon- 
sibilities cannot be met according to its fashion. 
There are times in which the question of a woman’s 
ability to support the family, if her husband dies, is 
of far more importance, both to her and to society, 
than the number of inches which her drapery shall 
sweep the ground, or the type of ancient pottery 
after which she shall model the dressing of her hair. 
It was a keen reply made by a perplexed little 
wife to her husband in my hearing the other day, in 62 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
tlie course of a discussion upon this subject. The 
gentleman drew from his portfolio of photographs a 
piece of statuary, — Zenobia perhaps, or Penelope: 
I scarcely noticed, except that it was a perfectly 
healthy, very wealthy, and exceptionably beautiful 
lady, whose dress lay flat upon the ground three or 
four inches, quite around her exquisite feet, and clung 
to her marvellously moulded limbs with a tenacity 
which would have been a serious matter if she had 
been turning Park-street corner on a windy day, to go 
shopping for the children, or to meet an appointment 
with a lecture committee, or visit an impatient pa- 
tient, or give her music lessons, or get to her store on 
Winter Street, or perform any of those little, light, 
royal duties to which our Zenobias of to-day are ac- 
customed. It might be questioned, inde&d, if the real 
Zenobia — passionately fond of the chase, an inde- 
fatigable walker, perfect mistress of a horse, accus- 
tomed to head her own troops on the march — ever 
submitted to such an extent of drapery. Let us say 
Penelope, after all. 
“ Now,” said the gentleman triumphantly, holding 
the picture to the light, “ there is grace in that, — 
the curving lines, the sweeping folds. It seems as 
if woman must retain something of that in her modes 
of dress, to be a woman.” AFTER THOUGHTS. 
63 
He was reminded, that, after all, it was royalty, 
nobility, aristocracy, which, even in the good old 
times, could affect such a costume as that, and that the 
working-women in all times have required a freer and 
simpler method of covering their active limbs. 
“ But,” said he, “ we do not want our ladies to 
dress like peasants ! ” 
“Ah, ” said the wife quickly, “but our ladies have 
to do a peasant’s work, you see! ” 
The statuesque age, my dear sir, has long gone by. 
This is the age of athletes. Atalanta has usurped 
Penelope’s place. Hermione dares at length to leave 
her long seclusion. 
“ Good, my Lord! . . . 
The ruddiness upon her lip is wet. 
. . You perceive she stirs: 
Start not; her actions shall be holy. 
. . Do not shun her, 
Until you see her die again; for then 
You kill her double ! ” 
It has been well said, that “ there are more false 
facts than false theories current in the world.” This 
is so applicable to the physiological effects of woman’s 
present style of dress, authoritative statement is so 
sorely needed on the subject, and I have already 64 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
added so freely to the mass of non-professional and 
irresponsible opinion which floats about it, that I 
feel a sense of unfitness in making more than “ one 
last, long, wild appeal ” to women about the matter. 
Go to the nearest thinking physician you can find, 
and obtain from her or him every namable or un- 
namable detail of the past, present, or future possi- 
ble or probable consequences to you of the dress you 
wear. 
If Heaven directs you to the right quarter, you will 
never wear it again, and will be beyond need of any 
lay entreaty. If to the wrong, you will go on trium- 
phant in the prosecution of the most exquisite system 
of suicide which infests society; and nothing which 
the- dreamer of unpleasant dreams could suggest to 
you would loosen your belt’s clasp by an ell’s width. 
In either case, my conscience will be clear. 
It may be suggested, that, if you happen on a man 
physician, the chances are, that he will tell you, Yes: 
the system of corset-lacing is injurious to a female; 
no question about that; that their stays should be 
loosened, or abandoned altogether, but that he finds 
great difficulty in inducing his lady patients to aban- 
don them ; that the heart and lungs are crowded out 
of their proper places, and the circulation impeded 
by tight lacing; that ladies wear too thin boots, and AFTER THOUGHTS. 
65 
need more flannel; that he does not know, perhaps, 
of any other particular in which their clothing is 
seriously injurious to them; that ladies are very deli- 
cate, make the best you may of them ; and how is 
the baby ? and good-morning. 
If you select a woman physician, the chances are, 
— ah, my heart misgives me ! What are the chances, 
when, out of a class of twenty-five women medical 
students, you will see, as I have seen, only two dress- 
ing with any due regard to hygienic laws, and a cer- 
tain proportion actually laced to the point of suffoca- 
tion ? What, indeed, shall the sheep do, when the 
shepherds are scattered ? 
However, if you chance upon such a woman physi- 
cian as you are more than likely to chance upon, — 
for you will leave the twenty-three to search for the 
two, you may be sure—she will give you, in the phy- 
sician’s unfettered and authoritative manner, a list of 
simple and alarming facts about the effects which it 
is reasonable to expect that your dress is having, or 
might have, upon you; which, if you are a sensible 
woman, will send you to your dressmaker straightway, 
crying, “ What shall I do to be saved ? ” 
She will tell you that a stout, popular impression has 
sprung into life of late years, that the custom of tight- 
lacing has passed entirely away. This she believres WHAT TO WEAR? 
to be as false as popular impressions are likely to be.* 
Some weight, perhaps, must be given to the testimony 
of dressmakers — the shrewdest special pleaders on 
earth — when they affirm that the average dress- 
waist is looser than it was twenty years ago. It is 
for the interest of the dressmaker to convince you 
that you are breathing when you are suffocating; but 
give her word due credence. Perhaps the wasp-waist 
is not quite as fashionable as formerly; but that the 
stiff whalebone and drawn cord and barbarous steel 
busk, “ warranted not to break,” should the prisoned 
vital organs which it binds struggle for release in 
some sharp movement or unusual strain of the body, 
— that these are doing every year a deadly work, no 
intelligent woman can doubt. 
*Said a professor of elocution, of experience'in the instruc- 
tion of both sexes, “ When I first gave lessons at the Young 
Ladies’ Seminaries, I was greatly puzzled. Some of my exer- 
cises are calisthenic, and require active movements of the arms. 
To my surprise, the girls could not meet their hands above their 
heads; many of them could not raise them half way to the 
required point. I was a young man, and did not know much 
about a lady’s dress ; and for some time the reason of this did 
not occur to me. At length I bethought me, that their mode of 
dress was at‘fault. I have been obliged to discontinue entirely 
the use of those exercises in girls’ schools, though I think them 
very important to the elocutionist.” AFTER THOUGHTS. 
67 
She will tell you that the little belle who laced 
herself into organic disease of the heart, and lies at 
death’s door, unable to move from her bed, lest she 
stir the flame of that pretty imbecility which she 
calls her life quite out by the lightest motion, is no 
mournful exception, over which you may raise a 
thankful sigh, but a distinct and alarming type. 
She will tell you that our much-abused acquaintance, 
the New-England east wind, has a questionable re- 
sponsibility in the production of female consumptives, 
compared with the “ hundred years of tight-lacing ” 
which has given us the typical New-England ramrod 
figure and chalk complexion. 
She will tell you that probably not one woman in 
fifty of your acquaintance ever knows, except in her 
undressed hours, from girlhood to the grave, what it 
is to fill the lower half of her lungs with air. 
She will tell you that you have never eaten a 
properly-digested dinner since that sad day when you 
first said to your dressmaker, standing, perhaps, on the 
tips of your toes to get upon the level of the glass, 
“ A little tighter, please,—just snug about the belt.” 
She will tell you that not one woman in a hundred 
knows how to walk a mile on a frosty morning, when 
walking is a science, not a saunter, and when every 
drop of young blood and every agency of young life is 68 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
bounding with energy; that a woman writhes, wrig- 
gles, jerks, struggles, but never walks ; that to expect 
a woman to perform the simplest kinds of necessary 
exercise healthfully, with her vital organs in a turn- 
screw, and her limbs in swaddling-clothes, is like in- 
viting a martyr on the rack to have a polka with you. 
She will lay especial stress, as I once heard a cele- 
brated woman-doctor do, upon what she calls pressure 
upon the solar plexus in the dress of woman. If my 
comprehension of the term is not at fault, she means 
by this, that collection of ganglia which feeds the 
nerves of the abdominal viscera. This lies between 
the lower edge of the sternum, or breastbone, and—• 
my anatomical knowledge falters, — but somewhere 
between your first tight button and your belt. Just 
here comes the closest pressure of your close-fitting 
clothes. A vast amount of the nervous illness and 
weakness of woman, she will assert, could be rea- 
sonably traced to this one feature in their dress. 
The most important nervous forces of the system are 
blockaded at headquarters. 
She will tell you, in short, that each and every 
process of respiration, of circulation, of digestion, and 
assimilation, of waste and renewal, of brain and nerve 
action, necessary to the healthy condition of the hu- 
man body, is distorted in the woman’s body under the 
influence of the woman’s dress. AFTER THOUGHTS. 
69 
She will lay down for your consideration this broad 
and simple rule : — 
Whatever physiological injuries would he wrought 
upon a man by clothing him in a woman’s dress are 
wrought upon a woman by that dress; in addition to 
these she suffers others peculiar to the sex. 
Whatever physical freedom and convenience are 
necessary to a man’s health or comfort are necessary 
to a woman’s; from these she should never be de- 
barred by any conventional distinctions imposed 
peculiarly upon the sex. 
She will assure you that the intelligent and hearty 
adoption of this formula in the reconstructing 
woman’s creed would, in two years, revolutionize the 
health, and with it the morals, manners, and brains, 
of every sensible woman in the country. 
She will suggest that the deduction from these 
principles of some such simple corollary as this, — 
“ My dress shall be as loose as a man’s; 
As short as my daily avocations require; 
As simple as I please; and 
As pretty as is convenient,” — 
would solve in detail the mass of uncertainties and 
perplexities which possess women who are really 
anxious to learn to live as rational women should. 70 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
She will then inform you, as a starting-point, that 
you do not probably wear one single article of cloth- 
ing, from your bonnet to your underwear, which is 
healthfully constructed or properly worn.* 
That it is not sufficient to put on a double-soled 
boot, or a low-necked flannel, or a broad-brimmed 
hat; that a thorough and patient revolution of attire 
only will meet the demands of the case; that these riots 
of alteration will never go to the root of the trouble; 
that your dress is all wrong; and that you must be 
willing to understand this before you can hope to get 
it at all right. 
She will tell you — 
But “ I will not anticipate ” the doctor further. 
To her tender mercies I commend you! May she 
bring the pallor of alarm to your lips! May she 
call the hot flush of shame to your cheeks ! May she 
summon the courage of independence to your heart, 
and the dignity of resolve to your enlightened eyes ! 
We hear it very often said, “But women dress for 
one another quite as much as they dress for men,” 
* A lady doctor, whose habit it is always to inquire into the 
construction of the dress of her female patients, finds it not infre- 
quent among them to wear from fourteen to eighteen different bind- 
ings about the waist. 71 
AFTER THOUGHTS. 
and are very often asked, “ Is not their vanity in com- 
petition with one another more at fault in this matter 
than their desire to please men ? ” 
Undoubtedly women dress for one another’s annihi- 
lation to a great and disgraceful extent. Unquestiona- 
bly, their vain love of display for display’s sake ruins 
souls and bodies enough to purify family, church, and 
state, in every year of our Lord that passes over our 
unworthy heads. 
We have only to inspect the registered sources 
whence resorts of sin are filled: first, starvation; 
second, love of, or fancied necessities of, dress, to 
appreciate this. 
But why do not men dress for one another ? 
And why does not their vanity lead them, in compe- 
tition with one another, into such crimes and idiocies 
of dress as women indulge in ? 
A good old Dutch maiden lady, whom I once knew, 
used to quench all arguments on the woman question 
with one remade, delivered with such Dutch phlegm 
and stoniness as discouraged all rejoinder: “Well, 
girls ain’t boys, and boys ain’t girls. There’s a mon- 
strous difference ! ” 
Is it, then, because of the “ monstrous difference,” 
that women wear panniers, and men wear coats; and 
that girls submit to the Grecian bend, while their 72 
WUAT TO WEAR? 
brothers play base-ball ? Is there a sheer, clear, essen- 
tial love of display in the feminine “make-up” which 
men entirely lack, and which sufficiently explains the 
peculiarities of the feminine taste and conscience in 
regard to dress ? 
I do not believe it. If it were true, it were indeed, 
with greater exactness than the Dutch mind suspects, 
“ a monstrous difference.” 
I maintain that too great weight cannot be given to 
the desire to attract men’s interest in women, which 
regulates the theory — it will be noticed that I say 
again the theory — of feminine dress. Underneath 
every secondary motive, and behind every innocent 
and ignorant act of compliance with it, that desire is 
powerfully at work. And, further, I am assured that 
such a doctrine of the relation of the sexes as the 
world has, up to this time, adopted, could not, in the 
nature of things, result otherwise. 
And further still. I cannot believe that any 
thoughtful woman — I speak only to women who 
think — can require any minute illustration of either 
of these propositions. If she should, these pages are 
not the place for it. 
We do not quarrel with the desire to be agreeable. 
It is as natural for one sex to wish to be attractive to 
the other as it is to breathe. Hor do we quarrel with 73 
AFTER THOUGHTS. 
the difference in the character of the desire, so far as it 
is Nature’s own. It is the unnatural difference which 
the distorted creed and practice of society have 
created, which works the mischief. The subjection of 
one sex to the other results in making the attraction 
of one the business of the other. To this, as in any 
system of subjection, rebellion were the only alterna- 
tive ; and the peculiar nature of this species of sub- 
ordination excludes that method of escape from the 
difficulty. It is the direct consequence of this state 
of things in the relation of the sexes, that the ex- 
pression of their mutual interest should become undue 
and disproportioned upon the part of the subject sex. 
That this expression is sadly disproportioned in wo- 
men seems to me too self-evident to require discus- 
sion here. Their mode of dress is but one form of 
it, though one of its more prominent ones. 
It is the theory of the “ subjectionist” (we must 
all coin a word sometime before we die, I suppose) 
that women are reticent and reluctant in affairs of 
love. He talks of “ maidenly reserve.” He denies 
women the right to express their matrimonial desires 
on suitable occasions and in suitable speech, lest it 
should be found “ unwomanly.” He regards the 
school-girl as over-bold who walks in broad day and 
in face of all the world to meet the school-boy as nat- 74 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
urally as the boy to her, following her young heart’s 
leadings as innocently as he, and both as much so as 
the birds that sing to one another over their heads. 
Now, whether he is correct in his theory or not, it is 
not to the immediate purpose to inquire, nor is an 
immediate opinion expressed in these pages. It is 
only necessary to our point to call attention to the 
fact, that the same girl who is trained to this sense 
of womanly propriety is taught to express, by her 
costume, a forwardness of which a good boy would be 
ashamed. And the woman who would compromise 
herself for life if she said to the man of her choice 
in simple English, “ Do you love me ? ” will say to 
him unspeakable things in that adornment of her 
person by which cultivated society allows her to woo 
him, and to which all society directs and degrades 
her highest and holiest emotions. The affectional 
nature must express itself somewhere, somehow. 
Denied those methods of action to which proper cul- 
ture, restraint, and balance would lead it, it falls to 
the lower circles, and uses the lower languages. No 
woman shall make an offer of marriage, we under- 
stand. An offer of marriage ! No man ever makes 
one more distinctly than women do. He only makes 
it more simply and loftily. 
It requires no microscopic eye to see that every 75 
AFTER THOUGHTS. 
tiling which tends to make 'physical attractiveness, 
on either side, the basis of interest between the 
sexes is the reverse of ennobling to both. The 
higher planes of intellectual and moral sympathy, on 
which alone the mutual happiness which men and 
women find in each other can gain a permanent 
foundation, can never be reached from such a foot- 
hold. 
“Oh, if you mean all that!” said a young lady, 
“ all that is another matter, I think.” 
“ All that ” is quite the same matter. It is “ all 
that” for which a woman’s dress is devised. It is 
“ all that” that makes the difference and the danger. 
It is “all that” that we must change, before men 
and women can assume their highest and true posi- 
tion towards each other. It is “ all that ” which we 
have to consider when we teach our girls to wear and 
love an ornament because they are girls, when their 
brothers, because they are boys, wear none. It is 
“all that” which we are doing whenever we allow 
them to cultivate the delicate complexion, the 
softened hand, the shrunken foot, the slender figure, 
which we discourage in our boys. It is “ all that ” 
which is the matter, when, by precept or example, we 
allow in the education of our daughters the room for 
a suspicion that the adornment of the person can be 76 
WIIA T TO WEAR ? 
of any more importance to them than it is to our 
sons. It is no more important, in equality’s great 
name ! If there be any difference, it is less so. If 
the daughters of Eve he fairer than the sons of 
Adam, they have less, not more, occasion for atten- 
tion to personal appearance. If women possess more 
physical grace than men, they do not need to depend 
on their clothes to say so. A beautiful girl is never 
so beautiful as in the simplest style of costume to 
which she can gain access. For every inch of 
frippery, she loses a charm. 
I do not assert, he it distinctly understood, that the 
majority of women consciously dress upon the ruling 
motive of being attractive to men. If they were con- 
scious of it, I do not believe they would do it. The 
worst of it is, that the instinct is too well transmitted, 
and the lifelong habit too fixed, to attract their dis- 
tinct attention. There was never a serpent that did 
not hide and crawl under foot. VI. 
OUR FASHION PLATE. 
But after all, as Mr. Mill asks of political 
economy, can the dress-reform “ do nothing, hut 
only object to every thing, and demonstrate that 
nothing can be done?” And-still, How to do it? 
How to leave off corsets, and not fall to pieces ? 
How to cut a loose waist that will not offend or dis- 
grace the style of your friends at a wedding recep- 
tion? How to shorten the skirts, and be ‘‘pre- 
sentable ” ? What to do with the old basques that 
must be worn, and the old, foolish, fashionable things 
that you cannot afford to throw away ? 
These seem very idle questions. To the mass of 
women they are very important ones; and the mass 
of women cannot dress properly till they are in some 
measure answered. 
It has been suggested to me that a few practical 
hints from the experience of those who have already 78 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
found a certain solution of these difficulties may 
not be found out of place at the close of this paper. 
Had I the sole responsibility of dressing a more 
or less stylish young lady in some approach to a 
sensible manner, I should begin by removing her 
corsets. 
Of course she “ never laces.” Of course she can 
“ turn around in them.” Of course you can “ put 
your hands under them anywhere.” Of course “ they 
are so loose that they are round under her arms half 
the time.” We know all about that. We have 
heard it a great many times before. It is a very old 
story. If a woman were dying of tbe close clasp 
of steel and whalebone, she would cry, “ Loose 
enough!” with her last gasp. Undoubtedly she 
believes it — tbe more’s the pity ! We will not pause 
to argue the point with her. Off with the corsets! 
Take them down stairs. No, don’t give them to 
Biddy. Never fasten about another woman, in the 
sacred name of charity, the chains from which you 
have yourself escaped. Never give away your ear- 
rings, when you have acquired a distaste for the 
wearing of them. Never make presents of the gew- 
gaws and frippery which your maturing taste dis- 
cards. What is intrinsically unbecoming or un- 
righteous is as unbecoming and unrighteous foi OUR FASHION PLATE. 
79 
your cook as for yourself. Never spread the spoiled 
leaven, and dare to congratulate yourself that your 
own bread of life is sweetened by a better. So 
burn up the corsets! No, nor do you save the 
whalebones. You will never need whalebones again. 
Make a bonfire of the cruel steel that has lorded it 
over the contents of the abdomen and thorax so 
many thoughtless years, and heave a sigh of relief; 
for your “ emancipation,” I assure you, has from this 
moment begun. 
A certain sense of freedom follows this change. 
The lungs partially dilate. The heart feebly feels 
for bounding-room. The nerve-centres are disturbed 
with an uncertain parody of ease. But a greater 
sense of discomfort grows upon you. The heavy 
skirts drag upon the hips. The back, perhaps for 
the first time in your life, begins to ache. The spine 
grows sore to the touch. An exhausting faintness 
takes possession of you. The delicate sensibilities 
of the solar plexus (let us be learned when we can!) 
quiver in an irritated and irritating manner. A 
worrying nervousness takes possession of the whole 
frame. By night you are ready to resurrect the ashes 
of your departed corsets — for which I was quite pre- 
pared when I begged for their auto-da-fe. You 
are miserable and discouraged. This is precisely 80 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
the point at which most women who “ mean well ’’ 
are led to abandon their half-hearted or half-in- 
structed efforts at dress-reform altogether. This is 
precisely the period at which they sho.uld be most 
thoroughly confirmed in it, and most seriously afraid to 
delay its accomplishment. 
So far from indicating that you should return to 
your stays, these uncomfortable sensations indicate 
that you have not been a day too soon in their 
removal. These are not the sensations of a healthy 
and untrammelled organism. The uncorseted savage 
knows nothing of them. Are women born in whale- 
bone jackets ? Did Heaven create Eve with g, natural 
inability to hold her fair, fresh body up without the 
assistance of Mrs. Ford’s latest patent? Is there 
reason, in the eternal nature of things, why your 
brother can stand straight, and feel at ease, in cloth- 
ing as loose as your wrapper, and you “ drop all to- 
gether ” unless you can lean upon a long steel rod ? 
Your discomfort is the discomfort of the poor old 
prisoner in the “ Tale of Two Cities,” who must needs 
hear with him, into his late and affluent liberty, the 
shoemaker’s tools, — the degrading sign of that sadder 
mental captivity of which the body’s bondage was 
the type. Your sensations are the sensations of a 
released captive, — not to he humored, he assured, for OUR FASIUON PLATE. 
81 
liberty’s sweet sake. Every one of them is an 
appeal to you to persist in the unshackling which has 
produced them, in the name of common nature and 
of common sense. Each one is a new form of an old 
fact. Why, we have authority for believing that 
there existed, before the war, negro slaves who did 
not desire the emancipation of their race ! 
But when you have endured them for twenty-four 
hours, or until you have reached a “realizing sense” 
of their extent, and their cause, and their disgrace, 
proceed to relieve them as follows: — 
Go to the nearest gentleman’s furnishing store, 
and purchase a pair of light suspenders. Do not 
go to the women’s stores; for the straps you will 
find there, with exceptions so rare that you may 
shop for a week without meeting them, are attached 
to hustles and other enormities. Unless you are 
a large woman, you will not wish for a pair longer 
than would fit a boy of eighteen or twenty years. 
Those can be as white and “ ladylike,” if you 
are concerned about that point, as the rest of 
your underwear. Sew up the six button-holes in the 
suspenders and put six buttons in their places, and 
put six button-holes in the bindings of all your skirts. 
The abundance of skirting compulsory upon women 
requires some such arrangement as this. Though I 82 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
know some women who prefer wearing two pairs of 
straps, thus substituting the addition of buttons 
simply, for the making of button-holes in the skirt. 
Others hang every thing upon a stout cotton waist. 
Others still prefer a very loose dress-waist sewed 
upon its skirt, and worn with a little sack. Others 
yet use a gigantic species of hook and eye in place of 
buttons. For a few days this arrangement will be 
uncomfortable, perhaps, across the shoulders or lungs; 
but that will soon wear off, and will be a thousand- 
fold compensated for by the great relief of lifting 
the skirts from the hips. 
You should never wear more than two skirts, — the 
dress and the underskirt; and these should be of as 
light material as possible. Your own comfort will 
lead you to this, in a very short time after you have 
once begun to learn what comfort is. You require 
no crinoline, which is a foolish and dangerous article 
of dress. Nor any bustle or pannier in pity’s name ! 
If you wear, or think you must wear, the conven- 
tional upper-dress, let it be either of one piece with 
the waist, like the polonaise, or buttoned like the 
other upon your straps. 
So far so good. But you are not yet comfortable. 
In fact, as time wears on, you grow less and less so. 
It occurs to you one day that your bindings are too OUR FASHION PLATE. 
83 
tight. Of course they are. So is your dress-waist. 
“Too loose to look decently” in the reign of the 
corset, when you had no means of knowing how a 
dress ought to feel, with strata of whalebones between 
you and it, the costume has grown mysteriously and 
appallingly tight. You loosen the bindings an inch, 
another, two; the demands of the partially released 
and ever-struggling organs behind them grow, and 
will not be satisfied. Some idea of the unnatural 
restriction to which the ordinary modes of dress sub- 
ject a woman’s system, may be formed from the fact 
that a woman who wears a twenty-two inch corset, a 
woman who really never “ laced,” or followed the 
extreme of custom in the dimensions of her clothing, 
and a slender woman, who is in general losing not 
gaining flesh perceptibly by the scales, will require, 
at the end of one year and a half of corsetless exist- 
ence, a thirty-inch, dress-binding for her comfortable 
wear. 
Loosen your bindings, then, till freed nature is con- 
tent. If it is forty inches, no matter. You will have 
a more graceful figure, before you will have done with 
it, than ever you have had yet. 
But still there is one thing lacking to your ease. 
Something is yet wrong. The longer breaths you are 
able to draw, the longer you must draw. The more 84 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
easily the process of digestion goes on, the more ease 
therein is craved. Nature grows exacting in her free- 
dom. Obey her! obey her to the letter, if so be that 
you may yet atone for long dislo}ralty. 
It dawns upon your imagination, vaguely, slowly, 
and sadly, one day, that your plain waist and you 
must at last part company. You have let it out: 
little result. You have let it out again : temporary 
relief. You have made a new one : you put both 
fists under while Miss Snipper “ fit and tried ; ” but 
behold here is a mystery! There is yet a sense of 
pressure, a sense of misery, a shortening of breath, 
a crowded-out feeling beneath the arms, a nervous 
rebellion against that restraint “ from the first tight 
button to the belt,” which has become well-nigh 
intolerable. 
You have reached that point of enlightenment 
now at which you are prepared to snap your finger 
at fashion-books, and count the expression upon the 
countenances of your rich relations as chaff before 
the wind of your poor necessities. With your body’s 
release, your soul’s independence has grown perhaps. 
At all events, you will be comfortable in your clothes, 
or you will die in the attempt. 
But what to do next ? The plaited gamp resolved 
the problem of existence until the first dinner-party, OUR FASHION PLATE. 
85 
or the first full-dress religious soiree of the season in 
“your town.” Then you felt as the business-man 
feels if he gets to church by mistake in his gray 
Scotch sack-coat. You did not feel dressed. You 
came home in despair. 
Now, a hint just here. Your new polonaise was to 
have fitted the figure. Countermand the order. Re- 
tain, if you like, the basque back of the garment, or 
some similar finish, and send the fiat forth for a per- 
fectly full, loose front, plaited or plain, which you 
can loosely and gracefully confine by a belt which 
may originate at the side seam, beneath the arm. 
This arrangement, particularly if turned back at the 
throat over a neat, thick, white underhandkerchief,— 
a very becoming and sensible method of wearing the 
linen, — has a graceful and finished look. 
But the mysteries of a woman’s toilet are past 
finding out; and still there is the old basque to be 
remodelled, and yet there is the July heat to consider, 
when, in addition to the need of thinner covering in 
the upper part of the dress, many women must feel 
that of wearing portions of their winter attire in a 
bisected form. 
(The superior coated and vested masculine intel- 
lect is requested not to puzzle itself with these 
details). 86 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
Take the old basque, then, or make the new one, 
in this manner: To the large remainder of the gar- 
ment, add the difference of what women call “new 
fronts ” only. Direct the modelling of these after 
what the pattern-hooks would denominate a “ half- 
garment ; ” that is, a garment neither loose nor tight, 
neither fitted nor unfitted, neither a squeeze nor a 
slouch. Such a garment requires only one bias, and 
and an inventive dressmaker, to give it as much 
“ air ” as the wearer is capable of carrying. 
By this time, assuming that you possess some cour- 
age, a great deal of obstinacy, and a little ingenuity, 
we may consider that you have found breathing-space 
in your costume sweet and sure enough to last a life- 
time. Neither the moods of fashion, nor the pitying 
scorn of dressmakers, can move you now or hereafter. 
Your determination to live, move, and have your be- 
ing as a human being should, belongs to those things 
which cannot be shaken. You will marry, bury, or 
“ receive ” your most modish acquaintances in your 
loose little jaunty jacket now without a pang. 
It remains to relieve the misery and danger of 
your still heavily-weighted hips,—while the long and 
abundant skirts are imperative, an insoluble problem. 
Improvement, however, is possible even in this direc- 
tion. OUR FASHION PLATE. 
87 
A lady who dresses “like other folks,” and a lady 
who dresses somewhat as a lady should, purchase, for 
instance, a silk suit at the same time. The proportions 
of the two wearers being nearly similar, the one will 
require twelve and a half yards in her pattern, the 
other, twenty-four. This gives some idea of the 
amount of extra weight imposed upon the bearer by 
the ordinary methods of trimming, as well as a hint* 
to the average woman’s pocket in respect to the 
quality of her clothes. The same sum will purchase 
for the one nearly or quite twice as rich a quality of 
material as it will purchase for the other. Women 
are very dull at solving the equation : cheap stuff pro- 
fusely trimmed is to an elegant material unorna- 
mented, as is the tumbled scrip to the silver specie, 
or as the dollar-store jewelry to Tiffany’s, or as the 
restlessness of any sense of imperfection to the dig- 
nity of essential worth. 
But we are trying now only to be comfortable, not 
beautiful. Remove the burdensome kilt-plaiting from 
your skirts, then. Rip off the heavy folds. Put the 
full force of your displeasure and your scissors upon 
the clumsy frills and foolery. Reduce your costume 
to its original products,—the smooth surface, the 
graceful fall, the fair, unbroken sheen of color. 
Quite apart from the prompt dictum of your improv- 88 
WHAT TO WEAR ? 
ing taste, “ How much better I look ! ” will be the 
happy consciousness of decreased weight to be carried 
by the burdened hips. “ The very women,” said a 
popular city dressmaker, testifying on this point, 
“who trim so are the women whose backs ache so 
that they can’t try on their dresses.” 
Only one more alteration remains practicable in 
face of existing modes, to increase the necessary 
sense of ease, and to decrease in a slight degree the 
real dangers to which you are always exposed by the 
length of your drapery. Cut your dress as short as 
you can wear it without attracting unsuitable atten- 
tion in a public place. How short this can be may 
be gathered from the fact that a lady of my acquaint- 
ance wore her dress at a distance of live inches from 
the ground for many weeks without its exciting the 
notice of her friends as an impropriety, or a novelt}7, 
or as being at all, and that the gentlemen of the 
family, when their attention was called to it, stoutly 
discredited the distance of the “ sweep,” and were 
only convinced of its actual enormity by the testi- 
mony of the foot-measure and the yardstick. 
But do not flatter yourself that you are yet hygieni- 
cally- attired. Every article of your underwear, ex- 
cepting the suspenders and the garments which they 
support, requires alteration still. In no one diree- OUR FASHION PLATE. 
89 
tion is the folly of a woman’s dress more evident than 
in the construction of her underwear. You can find 
valuable suggestions on .this point by sending to 
the New-England Hygeian Home, in Concord, Vt., 
for patterns of hygienic underwear. The sum of 
fifty cents buys you these patterns. There is also a 
Health Home in Danville, N.Y., I think, where the 
patterns of the American costume can be found. 
Some similar outfit is strictly imposed upon the lady 
patients in almost all such institutions. I cannot per- 
sonally vouch for the satisfactory character of these 
patterns ; and, if you make it a point of conscience to 
employ a seamstress who can provide you with the 
garments you want on condition that you provide her 
with the ideas, you will not need them. It is enough 
to say, in general and in public, my dear young lady, 
that you must suspend every single article of clothing 
which you wear, even to your flannels, from the 
shoulders, by some device or other, if you would 
attain any approach to real comfort. 
You require now thick, double-soled hoots, a 
loosely-fitting sack or cape, and a broad-brimmed, 
full-crowned hat to equip you for the street. Your 
hat must go upon your head, not upon your chignon, 
which I devoutly hope has been, like the other un« 90 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
necessaries of your costume, somewhat reduced by 
this long process of synthesis and analysis. You 
require no parasol to impede your hands, nor veil to 
hold this and last season’s accumulated dust-germs 
like an ether sponge to your lips. In wet weather 
your still long and injurious skirts will require the 
interposition of a heavy gaiter between themselves 
and the dampening ankles. These can be made of 
water-proof cloth, or even of the remains of your 
brother’s old coats, with great advantage. A pattern 
for such gaiters can be obtained at Madame Demo- 
rest’s for fifteen cents. 
In such a costume as I have described, even if 
entirely untrimmed, I can testify that a lady may go 
anywhere, at home or abroad, to the county fair or 
the symphony concert, to the afternoon female prayer- 
meeting, or to dine with the last new poet, and not 
meet with an instance of disagreeable recognition of 
her independence, other than a possible and really 
endurable stare from a dry-goods salesman, or a cer- 
tain obtuseness on the part of the hotel employe, — 
a punishment not greater than her mental or moral 
calibre can bear. 
I may add one word more, at least to exculpate 
myself from the charge of overlooking how the OUR FASHION PLATE. 
91 
weary faces of worn women have fallen at the men- 
tion of the inexorable stitches which drop so lightly 
from the pen hut so heavily from the fingers. 
To many of them a new garment is like a new 
grief, and mending-day as the return of a familiar 
spasm, and “ six new button-holes,” a perplexity out 
of which they cannot see the way. How shall they 
add to their over-burdened strength and time the 
extra task of planning and executing that serious 
insurrection, a dress-reform ? They may be dying of 
corsets and heavy skirts, but it seems to them easier 
to die than to get out of them ! 
Dear friends, don’t do it! Not an extra stitch ! 
Not an added sigh ! For whatever labor (performed 
by whatever means) will be necessary for arranging 
your new clothes liygienically, shall be far more 
than offset by the absence of trappings in them. 
And whatever extra and unexpected work is required 
to renew your old clothes can be done by a profes- 
sional seamstress, both to her good, your relief, and 
your mutual glory. Earn, borrow, or beg the money 
to pay a woman, but have the woman ! She can in 
one day, or at the most two, put your wardrobe into 
a rational condition. You will pay her from fifty 
cents to a dollar a day. If your health and liappi- 92 
WHAT TO WEAR? 
ness are not worth two dollars, you must be either 
poorer than any woman I know, or it can scarcely be 
worth your while to live at all, and you might as 
well die of your dress as in any other way, as far as 
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