The Evolution of Fashion

BY

FLORENCE MARY GARDINER

Author of "Furnishings and Fittings for Every Home," "About Gipsies," &c. &c.

SIR ROBERT BRUCE COTTON.

London:
THE COTTON PRESS, Granville House, Arundel Street, W.C.

TO

FRANCES EVELYN,

Countess of Warwick,
whose enthusiastic and kindly interest in all movements
calculated to benefit women is unsurpassed,
This Volume,
by special permission, is respectfully dedicated,
by

THE AUTHOR.

in the year of
Her Majesty Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee,
1897.

Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland. Princess Henry of Pless. The Countess of Warwick. Lady Marjorie Greville. Lady Eva Dugdale.

PREFACE.

In compiling this volume on Costume (portions of which originally appeared in the Ludgate Illustrated Magazine, under the editorship of Mr. A. J. Bowden), I desire to acknowledge the valuable assistance I have received from sources not usually available to the public; also my indebtedness to the following authors, from whose works I have quoted:—Mr. Beck, Mr. R. Davey, Mr. E. Rimmel, Mr. Knight, and the late Mr. J. R. Planché. I also take this opportunity of thanking Messrs. Liberty and Co., Messrs. Jay, Messrs. E. R. Garrould, Messrs. Walery, Mr. Box, and others, who have offered me special facilities for consulting drawings, engravings, &c., in their possession, many of which they have courteously allowed me to reproduce, by the aid of Miss Juliet Hensman, and other artists.

The book lays no claim to being a technical treatise on a subject which is practically inexhaustible, but has been written with the intention of bringing before the general public in a popular manner circumstances which have influenced in a marked degree the wearing apparel of the British Nation.

FLORENCE MARY GARDINER.

West Kensington, 1897.

CONTENTS.

THE EVOLUTION OF FASHION

CHAPTER I.

THE DRESS, B.C. 594—A.D. 1897.

"Fashions that are now called new
Have been worn by more than you;
Elder times have used the same,
Though these new ones get the name."
Middleton's "Mayor of Quinborough."

EARLY EGYPTIAN.

A hard fate has condemned human beings to enter this mortal sphere without any natural covering, like that possessed by the lower animals to protect them from the extremes of heat and cold. Had this been otherwise, countless myriads, for untold ages, would have escaped the tyrannical sway of the goddess Fashion, and the French proverb, il faut souffrir pour être belle, need never have been written.

The costume of our progenitors was chiefly remarkable for its extreme simplicity; and, as far as we can gather, no difference in design was made between the sexes. A few leaves entwined by the stalks, the feathers of birds, the bark of trees, or roughly-dressed skins of animals were probably regarded by beaux and belles of the Adamite period as beautiful and appropriate adornments for the body, and were followed by garments made from plaited grass, which was doubtless the origin of weaving, a process which is nothing more than the mechanical plaiting of hair, wool, flax, &c. In many remote districts these primitive fashions still prevail, as, for example, in Madras, where, at an annual