Men and women must yet learn to dress so as to move and breathe freely
and naturally before they reach the point where fashion will stand
still--having folds that fall simply, short for action, long for show.
Woman must appear yet before us as she should do, supple and free. The
world must yet wake up to the truth and purity of beauty, and to do so
must come back to its Creator--delicacy weighed in the scales with the
virtues of nature; the beauty of strength admired, before the whiteness
and softness of the drooping flower.
We must love all that is beautiful. The naked form of a woman is
beautiful, but the folds of a loosely-fitting, simply plain costume are
also beautiful, and perhaps the whiteness and softness gained, if it can
be gained without loss of strength, by shading it from the sun, is a
point gained; for it is lovely in its fragility--a loveliness which the
air of heaven would roughen, which the eye of day would cover as
thoroughly as a veil--subtle gradations which are never seen except by
the painter.
Cover it, if you will, with soft folds that will fit to the motions, not
with the snaky outer skin which reveals the shape completely, but
without a touch of the multitude of colour charms. We can never return
to the innocence of Eden until we fling off the clay portion of us, and
look upon life with spiritual eyes. Then the ugliness of sin and crime
will make us droop our eyes, but never the perfection of nature.
I have seen people turn with blushing faces at the sight of a naked
child, as if it was something to be guilty about. Education had debased
their minds. In the South Seas I have watched the sexes together plunge
into the coral-washed waves, and discourse on passing events ashore, and
they had no thought of shame. Nature had left them where education will
bring us all, if the time ever comes when knowledge can be surmounted.
Choose, while you must dress, each a fashion to suit yourselves. Begin
with the figure which your Maker has given you, and assimilate as nearly
as your material will permit your fashion to that figure. Consult the
hygiene of that form, and make your fashion subordinate to those laws.
Perfect health and perfect grace go together. Consult the colour which
nature has given to you, and place the colour of your costume in harmony
with that, to keep that colour, when dressed, exactly in the same
position as it is when you are nude; for depend upon it, if you are in
health, no heightening or lowering will ever become you so well.
Remember that fashionable colours may have suited the particular woman
who made the fashion; seldom anyone else.
Think you are as good a woman as any other, and bring pride to the
rescue. You have equal right, through the royalty of your perfect
womanhood, to make a fashion as any duchess or _demi-mondaine_ in the
land.
Banish false hair, which only heats your brains and wears away your own
hair, besides carrying dead impressions and nameless diseases into your
system.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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