these principles, in spite of Mr. Wentworth Huyshe’s terrible threat that
he will not propose to them as long as they wear it, for all charges of a
want of womanly character in these forms of dress are really meaningless;
every right article of apparel belongs equally to both sexes, and there
is absolutely no such thing as a definitely feminine garment. One word
of warning I should like to be allowed to give: The over-tunic should be
made full and moderately loose; it may, if desired, be shaped more or
less to the figure, but in no case should it be confined at the waist by
any straight band or belt; on the contrary, it should fall from the
shoulder to the knee, or below it, in fine curves and vertical lines,
giving more freedom and consequently more grace. Few garments are so
absolutely unbecoming as a belted tunic that reaches to the knees, a fact
which I wish some of our Rosalinds would consider when they don doublet
and hose; indeed, to the disregard of this artistic principle is due the
ugliness, the want of proportion, in the Bloomer costume, a costume which
in other respects is sensible.
COSTUME
ARE we not all weary of him, that venerable impostor fresh from the steps
of the Piazza di Spagna, who, in the leisure moments that he can spare
from his customary organ, makes the round of the studios and is waited
for in Holland Park? Do we not all recognize him, when, with the gay
_insouciance_ of his nation, he reappears on the walls of our summer
exhibitions as everything that he is not, and as nothing that he is,
glaring at us here as a patriarch of Canaan, here beaming as a brigand
from the Abruzzi? Popular is he, this poor peripatetic professor of
posing, with those whose joy it is to paint the posthumous portrait of
the last philanthropist who in his lifetime had neglected to be
photographed,—yet he is the sign of the decadence, the symbol of decay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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