Not like the lilies

Ran across an ebook called Woman as Decoration by Emily Burbank from 1890 that tickled me. Love the photos of Mrs. Conde Nast in dress up clothes. Found it while searching for something else, along with too many distractions on Project Gutenberg’s site. Hours later …

Admittedly, I didn’t read the entire book, but skimmed a few paragraphs and looked at the photos and captions. The text is delightfully refined and formal – a tone not in fashion any more than these costumes are. I wonder at what we have lost in exchange for a more personal, conversational tone in our books. And what we have lost in a less formal style of dress?

Then again, what have we gained with our more casual styles? One of the epigrams at the beginning of the book is this

"When was that 'simple time of our fathers' when people were too sensible to care for fashions? It certainly was before the Pharaohs, and perhaps before the Glacial Epoch." W. G. SUMNER, in Folkways 

This book is primarily about how to dress in a costume, but it also says much about the psychology of clothing:

Has the reader ever observed the effect of clothes upon manners? It is amazing, and only proves how pathetically childlike human nature is.


Put any woman into a Marie Antoinette costume and see how, during an evening she will gradually take on the mannerisms of that time. This very point was brought up recently in conversation with an artist, who in referring to one of the most successful costume balls ever given in New York—the crinoline ball at the old Astor House—spoke of how our unromantic Wall Street men fell to the spell of stocks, ruffled shirts and knickerbockers, and as the evening advanced, were quite themselves in the minuette and polka, bowing low in solemn rigidity, leading their lady with high arched arm, grasping her pinched-in waist, and swinging her beruffled, crinolined form in quite the 1860 manner.

Some women, even girls of tender years, have a natural instinct for costuming themselves, so that they contribute in a decorative way to any setting which chance makes theirs. Watch children "dressing up" and see how among a large number, perhaps not more than one of them will have this gift for effects. It will be she who knows at a glance which of the available odds and ends she wants for herself, and with a sure, swift hand will wrap a bright shawl about her, tie a flaming bit of silk about her dark head, and with an assumed manner, born of her garb, cast a magic spell over the small band which she leads on, to that which, without her intense conviction and their susceptibility to her mental attitude toward the masquerade, could never be done.

If I got to pick which costume I’d go back in time for, I think it would be this one:

Mrs. Conde Nast in Garden Costume

Not only are the pictures entertaining, but the ideas are also thought provoking – I’m not one to give a great deal of thought to my clothes, but I try to be at least within a decade of the current styles. I’ve given up most of my mom jeans – except my favorite Gap classics that I’ll keep until they come back in style someday.

I’ve decided that not only is being stylish too expensive and too much work, but it also makes you unapproachable. The lady who looks immaculately put together intimidates me. I assume she is a woman who shops or who has money to burn, and then I assume that we don’t have much in common. Or I feel that she looks at me and wonders why I don’t take care of myself.

On the other hand, the frumpy lady doesn’t seem any more approachable. I’ve been known to avoid the woman in the long denim jumper because I assume that the woman who wears it is making a statement about her rejection of the world, a little like a nun’s habit, or an Amish woman's dress and cap. Perhaps there’s a part of me who thinks I’m just not holy enough to be this person’s friend.

Wrong to judge by appearances, I know. My first impressions are often wrong, thankfully: I have friends who are dowdy jumper wearers and friends who highlight their hair, don’t step out without make-up and always are dressed like a million dollars. But as the book says

"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 God-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'être."

So I try to find a balance in my closet. Without spending much time, money or thought on clothes, I at least try to put a little effort into wearing clothes that look pretty. Dare I say “attractive”? Vanity revealed. I like to think the persona I project is one who is not absorbed by appearance but who tries to look presentable. I’ve never considered myself the pretty girl, but I have wanted people to look at me and think, "That’s someone I’d like to be my friend." I want to attract not their attention, per se, but their kind regard.

"It is the woman who knows what she should wear, what she can wear and how to wear it, who is most efficient in whatever she gives her mind to. She it is who will expend the least time, strength and money on her appearance, and be the first to report for duty in connection with the next obligation in the business of life."

Not that I can't sympathize with the clothes' lover: some clothes are just plain beautiful. Most of the time, their cost makes something to admire from afar, not to own, like a museum exhibit or a book of photos, but the other day, I found a black chiffon dress adorned with a few jet bugle beads in a kind of a flapper girl drape (just right for my body type which is not in sync with today’s styles for Rubenesque ladies) in my size at the thrift store. Irresistable, especially since I gave away all but one black velvet formal when we moved from Virginia, and it’s likely we’ll go to the Seabee Ball next year. My new costume.

I wish I could find the “modeling” pictures my cousins and sister and I used to take when we were sending each other our homemade fashion magazine, Puella, an exercise in vanity, although it didn’t seem to harm my cousin who’s a habit wearing nun. There’s a pose just like this one of Mrs. Vernon Castle dressed as Spring:

Only not so lovely.

Melanie has a quote posted on her blog about dressing for the journey of life. And of course the Bible is the real authority on fashion:

Matthew 6:25-34 ESV :“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ... "


1 Corinthians 6:19-20 ESV: "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. "


1 Peter 3:3-4 ESV: "Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious"

Proverbs 31:30 ESV: "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. "