If, however, the men's dress in England is informal, impatient, I
think one will be well within the lines of safety in saying that above
everything the English women's dress expresses _sentiment_, though I
suppose it is no more expressive of personal sentiment than the chic
of our women's dress is expressive of personal chic; in either case the
dressmaker, male or female, has impersonally much to do with it. Under
correction of those countrywomen of ours who will not allow that
the Englishwomen know how to dress, I will venture to say that their
expression of sentiment in dress is charming, but how charming it
comparatively is I shall be far from saying. I will only make so bold
as to affirm that it seems more adapted to the slender fluency of youth
than some realizations of the American ideal; and that after the azaleas
and rhododendrons in the Park there is nothing in nature more suggestive
of girlish sweetness and loveliness than the costumes in which the
wearers flow by the flowery expanses in carriage or on foot. The colors
worn are often as courageous as the vegetable tints; the vaporous air
softens and subdues crimsons and yellows that I am told would shriek
aloud in our arid atmosphere; but mostly the shades worn tend to soft
pallors, lavender, and pink, and creamy white. A group of girlish
shapes in these colors, seen newly lighted at a doorway from a passing
carriage, gave as they pressed eagerly forward a supreme effect of that
sentiment in English dress which I hope I am not recreant in liking.
Occasionally, also, there was a scarf, lightly escaping, lightly caught,
which, with an endearing sash, renewed for a fleeting moment a bygone
age of Sensibility, as we find it recorded in many a graceful page, on
many a glowing canvas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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