Woman as Decoration Part 13

One of the 1917 silhouettes.

Naturally, since woman to-day dresses for her occupation--work or play--the characteristic silhouettes are many.

This one is reproduced to ill.u.s.trate our point that outline can be affected by the smallest detail.

The sketch is by Elisabeth Searcy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Drawn from Life by Elisabeth Searcy_ _A Modern Silhouette--1917 Tailor-made_]

Mark Twain was elemental and at the same time a great artist,--the embodiment of extreme contradictions, and his flair for gay colour was one proof of his elemental strain. We laughed that night as he made word pictures of how men and women should dress. Next morning, toward noon, on looking out of a window, we saw standing in the middle of the driveway a figure wrapped in crimson silk, his white hair flying in the wind, while smoke from a pipe encircled his head. Yes, it was Mark Twain, who in the midst of his writing, had been suddenly struck with the thought that the road needed mending, and had gone out to have another look at it! It was a bl.u.s.tering day in Spring, and cold, so one of the household was sent to persuade him to come in. We can see him now, returning reluctantly, wind-blown and vehement, gesticulating, and stopping every few steps to express his opinion of the men who had made that road! The flaming red silk robe he wore was one his daughter had brought him from Liberty's, in London, and he adored it. Still wrapped in it, and seemingly unconscious of his unusual appearance, he joined us on the balcony, to resume a conversation of the night before.

The red-robed figure seated itself in a wicker chair and berated the idea that mortal man ever _could_ be generous,--act without selfish motives. With the greatest reverence in his tone, sitting there in his whimsical costume of bright red silk, at high noon,--an immaculate French butler waiting at the door to announce lunch, Mark Twain concluded an a.n.a.lysis of modern religion with "--why the G.o.d _I_ believe in is too busy spinning spheres to have time to listen to human prayers."

How often his words have been in our mind since war has shaken our planet.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ARTIST AND HIS COSTUME

The world has the habit of deriding that which it does not understand.

It is the most primitive way of bolstering one's limitations. How often the woman or man with a G.o.d-given sense of the beautiful, the fitting, harmony between costume and setting, is described as poseur or poseuse by those who lack the same instinct. In a sense, of course, everything man does, beyond obeying the rudimentary instincts of the savage, is an affectation, and it is not possible to claim that even our contemporary costuming of man or woman always has _raison d'etre_.

We accept as the natural, unaffected raiment for woman and man that which custom has taught us to recognise as appropriate, with or without reason for being. For example, the tall, shiny, inflexible silk hat of man, and the tortuous high French heels of woman are in themselves neither beautiful, fitting, nor made to meet the special demands of any setting or circ.u.mstance. Both hat and heels are fashions, unbeautiful and uncomfortable, but to the eye of man to-day serve as insignia of formal dress, decreed by society.

The artist nature has always a.s.sumed poetic license in the matter of dress, and as a rule defied custom, to follow an inborn feeling for beauty. That much-maligned short velvet coat and soft loose tie of the painter or writer, happen to have a most decided _raison d'etre_; they represent comfort, convenience, and in the case of the velvet coat, satisfy a sensitiveness to texture, incomprehensible to other natures.

As for the long hair of some artists, it can be a pose, but it has in many cases been absorption in work, or poverty--the actual lack of money for the conventional haircut. In cities we consider long hair on a man as effeminate, an indication of physical weakness, but the Russian peasant, most st.u.r.dy of individuals, wears his hair long, and so do many others among extremely primitive masculine types, who live their lives beyond the reach of Fashion and barbers.

The short hair of the sincere woman artist is to save time at the toilette.

There is always a limited number of men and women who, in ordinary acts of life, respond to texture, colour or line, as others do to music or scenery, and to be at their best in life, must dress their parts as they feel them. j.a.panese actors who play the parts of women, dress like women off the stage, and live the lives of women as nearly as possible, in order to acquire the feeling for women's garments; they train their bodies to the proper feminine carriage, counting upon this to perfect their interpretations.

The woman who rides, hunts, shoots, fishes, sails her own boat, paddles, golfs and plays tennis, is very apt to look more at home in habit, tweeds and flannels, than she does in strictly feminine attire; the muscles she has acquired in legs and arms, from violent exercise, give an actual, not an a.s.sumed, stride and a swing to the upper body. In sports clothes, or severely tailored costume, this woman is at her best.

Most trying for her will be demi-toilette (house gowns). She is beautiful at night because a certain balance, dignity and grace are lent her by the decolletage and train of a dinner or ball gown. English women who are devotees of sport, demonstrate the above fact over and over again.

While on the subject of responsiveness to texture and colour we would remind the reader that Richard Wagner hung the room in which he worked at his operas with bright silks, for the art stimulus he got from colour, and it is a well-known fact that he derived great pleasure from wearing dressing gowns and other garments made from rich materials.

Clyde Fitch, our American playwright, when in his home, often wore velvet or brocaded silks. They were more sympathetic to his artist nature, more in accord with his fondness for wearing jewelled studs, b.u.t.tons, scarf-pins. In his town and country houses the main scheme, leading features and every smallest detail were the result of Clyde Fitch's personal taste and effort, and he, more than most men and women, appreciated what a blot an inartistic human being can be on a room which of itself is a work of art.

PLATE x.x.x

Souvenirs of an artist designer's unique establishment, in spirit and accomplishment _vrai Parisienne_. Notice the long cape in the style of 1825.

Tappe himself will tell you that all periods have had their beautiful lines and colours; their interesting details; that to find beauty one must first have the feeling for it; that if one is not born with this subtle instinct, there are manifold opportunities for cultivating it.

His claim is the same as that made in our _Art of Interior Decoration_; the connoisseur is one who has pa.s.sed through the schooling to be acquired only by contact with masterpieces,--those treasures sifted by time and preserved for our education, in great art collections.

Tappe emphasises the necessity of knowing the background for a costume before planning it; the value of line in the physique beneath the materials; the interest to be woven into a woman's costume when her type is recognised, and the modern insistence on appropriateness--that is, the simple gown and close hat for the car, vivid colours for field sports or beach; a large fan for the woman who is mistress of sweeping lines, etc., etc.

Tappe is absolutely French in his insistence upon the possible eloquence of line; a single flower well poised and the chic which is dependent upon _how a hat or gown is put on_. We have heard him say: "No, I will not claim the hat in that photograph, though I made it, because it is _mal pose_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Sketched for "Woman as Decoration" by Thelma Cudlipp_ _Tappe's Creations_]

In England, and far more so in America, men are put down as effeminate who wear jewelry to any marked extent. But no less a person than King Edward VII always wore a chain bangle on his arm, and one might cite countless men of the Continent as thoroughly masculine--Spaniards in particular--who wear as many jewelled rings as women. Apropos of this, a famous topaz, worn as a ring for years by a distinguished Spaniard was recently inherited by a relation in America--a woman. The stone was of such importance as a gem, that a record was kept of its pa.s.sing from France into America. As a man's ring it was impressive and the setting such as to do it honour, but being a man's ring, it was too heavy for a woman's use. A pendant was made of the stone and a setting given it which turned out to be too trifling in character. The consequence was, the stone lost in value as a Rubens' canvas would, if placed in an art nouveau frame.

Whether it is a precious stone, a valued painting or a woman's costume--the effect produced depends upon the character of its setting.

CHAPTER XXV

IDIOSYNCRASIES IN COSTUME

Fashions in dress as in manners, religion, art, literature and drama, are all powerful because they seize upon the public mind.

The Chelsea group of revolutionary artists in New York doubtless see,--perhaps but dimly, the same star that led Goethe and Schiller on, in the storm and stress period of their time. We smile now as we recall how Schiller stood on the street corners of Leipzig, wearing a dressing-gown by day to defy custom; but the youth of Athens did the same in the last days of Greece. In fact then the darlings of the gilded world struck att.i.tudes of abandon in order to look like the Spartans.

They refused to cut their hair and they would not wash their hands, and even boasted of their ragged clothes after fist fights in the streets.

Yes, the gentlemen did this.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was a cult that wore furs in Summer and thin clothes in Winter, to prove that love made them strong enough to resist the elements! You will recall the Euphuists of England, the Precieuses of France and the Illuminati of the eighteenth century, as well as Les Merveilleux and Les Encroyables. The rich during the Renaissance were great and wise collectors but some followed the fashion for collecting ma.n.u.scripts even when unable to read them. It is interesting to find that in the fourth and fifth centuries it was fashionable to be literary. Those with means for existence without labour, wrote for their own edification, copying the style of the ancient poets and philosophers.

As early as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Venetian women were shown the Paris fashions each Ascension Day on life-size dolls, displayed by an enterprising importer.

It is true that fashions come and go, not only in dress, but how one should sit, stand, and walk; how use the hands and feet and eyes. To squint was once deemed a modest act. Women of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries stood with their abdomens out, and so did some in 1916! There are also fashions in singing and speaking.

The poses in portraits express much. Compare the exactly prim Copley miss, with a recent portrait by Cecilia Beaux of a young girl seated, with dainty satin-covered feet outstretched to full extent of the limbs, in casual impertinence,--our age!

To return to the sixteenth century, it is worthy of note that some Venetian belles wore patines--that is, shoes with blocks of wood, sometimes two feet high, fastened to the soles. They could not move without a maid each side! As it was an age when elemental pa.s.sions were "good form," jealous husbands are blamed for these!

In the seventeenth century the idle dancing youth of to-day had his prototype in the Cavalier Servente, who hovered at his lady's side, affecting extravagant and effeminate manners.

The corrupt morals of the sixteenth century followed in the wake of social intercourse by travel, literature, art and styles for costumes.

Mme. Recamier, the exquisite embodiment of the Directoire style as depicted by David in his famous portrait of her, scandalised London by appearing in public, clad in transparent Greek draperies and scarfs.

Later Mme. Jerome Bonaparte, a Baltimore belle, quite upset Philadelphia by repeating Mme. Recamier's experiment in that city of brotherly love!

We are also told on good authority that one could have held Madame's wedding gown in the palm of the hand.

Victorian hoops for public conveyances, paper-soled slippers in snow-drifts, wigs immense and heavy with powder, hair-oil and furbelows, hour-gla.s.s waist lines producing the "vapours" fortunately are no more.

Taken by and large, we of the year 1917 seem to have reached the point where woman's psychology demands of dress fitness for each occasion, that she may give herself to her task without a material handicap. May the good work in this direction continue, as the panorama of costumes for women moves on down the ages that are to come.