Chats on CostumeRhead, G. Woolliscroft (George Woolliscroft)
History
Chats on Costume
Rhead, G. Woolliscroft (George Woolliscroft)
Clothing and dress
Dr. Jaeger ("Health Culture") discusses the probable reasons for the
greater prevalence of baldness among men than among women. While
rejecting the theory that the competition of the beard is precarious to
the hair of the head, abstracting from the latter its due nourishment,
and pointing out that the long beards and luxuriant heads of hair of
our ancestors refute this theory that the more strenuous head-work
which falls to the share of the male sex is responsible for the loss
of hair; that the unnatural custom of cutting men's hair, first adopted
when nature was abandoned in favour of the fashions of civilisation,
is to blame for it; that drink, dissolute habits, or heredity is the
cause--he finds that a far more probable cause is the difference
between the male and female head-covering, "which latter is, as a rule,
lighter, more airy, and more porous than the usually almost waterproof
and exceedingly absurd male head-coverings, such as the stiff felt
hats, and high hats, with the strip of leather which encircles the
forehead and effectually retains the perspiration."
"The best head-covering would certainly be--none at all. But usage,
and in many cases weather conditions, render this impracticable."...
"Not only are the hard hats, now in such general use, injurious on
account of the pores of the material being closed, impeding the passage
of the exhalation from the head; but the shellac used in stiffening
them has an injurious effect, from which the cherry gum used in the
case of the soft hats is comparatively free." He adds: "Of course,
soft hats cannot be worn in all cases--on ceremonial occasions the
hard hat may be chosen; but ordinarily the hygienically superior soft
hat should be worn." Why, however, on occasions of ceremony? Was
ceremonial non-existent before the advent of the nineteenth century?
It would rather appear that if the nineteenth century is conspicuous
for anything it is for its _absence_ of ceremonial. There is absolutely
no reason why a hat of a particular density, or even of a particular
shape, should be necessary to occasions of high ceremonial. Moreover,
in this connection it may be very pertinently asked, Is artistic
invention so utterly dead that it cannot devise a head-gear which
shall fit in with its surroundings on such occasions as call for more
dignity and impressiveness in the matter of costume? It is, however, an
incontrovertible fact, as a well-known present-day writer has pointed
out, that "revolutions are practicable in everything--in manners,
morals, government, even religion--sooner than in clothes; and that
sumptuary laws are the only laws that have always failed of being
obeyed." It is universally admitted that modern dress is intolerably
ugly; that it fails, not only upon its artistic side, but also upon the
score of utility; yet every suggestion for its improvement is always
met by a flat _non possumus_.
[Illustration: MRS. ANNE WARREN.
_After Romney._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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