It was published in the New York tribune, April 19, 1885
The full article is here
There has been, within the last few years, both in America and in England, a marked development of artistic taste. It is impossible to go into the houses of any of our friends without seeing at once that a great change has taken place. There is a far greater feeling for color, a far greater feeling for the delicacy of form, as well as a sense that art can touch the commonest things of the household into a certain grace and a certain loveliness. But there is a whole side of human life which has has been left almost entirely untouched. I mean of course the dress of men and of women.Near the end of the article he says:
I have been sometimes accused of setting too high an importance on dress. To this I answer that dress in itself is a thing to me absolutely unimportant. In fact, the more complete a dress looks on the dummy-figure of the milliner's shop, the less suitable it is for being worn. The gorgeous costumes of Mr. worth's atelier seem to me like to Capo di Monte cups, which are all curves and coral-handles, and covered over with a Pantheon of gods and goddesses in high excitement and higher relief; that is to say, they are curious things to look at, but entirely unfit for use. The French milliners consider that women are created especially for them by Providence, in order to display their elaborate and expensive wares. I hold that dress is made for the service of Humanity. They think that Beauty is a matter of frills and furbelows. I care nothing at all for frills, and I don't know what furbelows are, but I care a great deal for the wonder and grace of the human Form, and I hold that the very first cannon of art is that Beauty is always organic, and comes from within, and not from without, comes from the perfection of its own being and not from any added prettiness. And that consequently the beauty of a dress depends entirely and absolutely on the loveliness it shields, and on the freedom and motion that it does not impede.
From this it follows that there can be no beauty of national costume until there is a national knowledge of the proportions of human form. To Greek and Roman such knowledge came naturally from the gymnasium and the palaestra, from the dance in the meadow and the race by the stream. We must acquire it by the employment of art in education. And knowledge of the kind I propose will soon become the inheritance of all, if each child were taught to draw as early as it is taught to write.
And if a child does study the human figure it will learn a great many valuable laws of dress. It will learn, for instance, that a waist is a very beautiful and delicate curve, the more delicate, the more beautiful, and not as the milliner fondly imagines, an abrupt right angle suddenly occurring in the middle of the person. He will learn that size has nothing to do with beauty. This, I dare say, seems a very obvious proposition. So it is. All truths are perfectly obvious once one sees them. The only thing is to see them. Size is a mere accident of existence, it is not a quality of Beauty ever. A great cathedral is beautiful, but so is the bird that flies round its pinnacle, and the butterfly that settles on its shaft. A foot is not necessarily beautiful because it is small. The smallest feet in the world are those of the Chinese ladies, and they are the ugliest also.
It is curious that so many people, while they are quite ready to recognize, in looking at an ordinary drawing room, that the horizontal line of the frieze and dado diminish the height of the room, and the vertical lines of the pillar or panel increase it, yet should not see that the same laws apply to dress also. Indeed in modern costume the horizontal line is used far too often, the vertical line far too rarely, and the oblique line scarcely at all.
The waist, for instance, is as a rule placed too low down. A long waist implies a short skirt, which is always ungraceful as it conveys an effect of short limbs, whereas a high waist gives an opportunity of a fine series of vertical lines falling in the folds of the dress down to the feet, and giving a sense of tallness and grace. Broad puffed sleeves, again, by intensifying the horizontal line across the shoulders, may be worn by those that are tall and slight, as they diminish any excessive height and give proportion; by those who are small they should be avoided. And the oblique line, which one gets by a cloak falling from the shoulder across the body, or by a gown looped up at the side, is suitable to almost all figures. It is a line which corresponds to the direction of motion, and conveys an impression of dignity as well as of freedom. There are of course many other applications of these lines. I have mentioned merely one or two in order to remind people how identical the laws of architecture and of dress really are, and how much depends on line and proportion. Indeed the test of a good costume is in its silhouette, how in fact, it would look in sculpture.
Fashion rests upon folly. Art rests upon law. Fashion is ephemeral. Art is eternal. Indeed what is a fashion really? A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months! It is quite clear that were it beautiful and rational we would not alter anything that combined those two rare qualities. And wherever dress has been so, it has remained unchanged in law and principle for many hundred years.And adds:
What is beautiful looks always new and always delightful, and can no more become old-fashioned than a flower can-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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