NATIONALITY IN COSTUME

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age when elemental passions 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. Récamier, 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. Récamier'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-glass 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.

CHAPTER XXVI

NATIONALITY IN COSTUME

HEN seen in perspective, the costumes of various periods, as well as the

architecture, interior decoration and furnishings of the homes of men

appear as distinct types, though to the man or woman of any particular

period the variations of the type are bewildering and misleading. It is the

same in physical types; when visiting for the first time a foreign land one is

immediately struck by a national cast of feature, English, French, American,

Russian, etc. But if we remain in the country for any length of time, the differences

between individuals impress us and we lose track of those features and

characteristics the nation possesses in common. To-day, if asked what outline,

materials and colour schemes characterise our fashions, some would say that almost

anything in the way of line, materials and colour were worn. There is, however,

always an epoch type, and while more than ever before the law of appropriateness

has dictated a certain silhouette for each occasion,--each occupation,--when

recorded in costume books of the future we will be recognised as a distinct phase;

as distinct as the Gothic, Elizabethan, Empire or Victorian period.

PLATE XXXI

Costume of a Red Cross Nurse, worn while

working in a French war hospital, by Miss

Elsie de Wolfe, of New York. An example of

woman costumed so as to be most efficient

for the work in hand.

Miss de Wolfe's name has become

synonymous with interior decoration,

throughout the length and breadth of our land,

but she established a reputation as one of the

best-dressed women in America, long before

she left the stage to professionally decorate

homes. She has done an immeasurable

amount toward moulding the good taste of

America in several fields. At present her

energies are in part devoted to disseminating

information concerning a cure for burns, one

of the many discoveries resulting from the

exigencies of the present devastating war.

Miss Elsie de Wolfe in Costume of Red Cross

Nurse

As we have said, in studying the history of woman decorative, one finds two widely

separated aspects of the subject, which must be considered in turn. There is the

classifying of woman's apparel which comes under the head of European dress,

woman's costume affected by cosmopolitan influences; costumes worn by that part

of humanity which is in close intercommunication and reflecting the ebb and flow

of currents--political, geographical and artistic. Then we have quite another field

for study, that of national costumes, by which we mean costumes peculiar to some

one nation and worn by its men and women century after century.

It is interesting as well as depressing for the student of national characteristics to

see the picturesque distinguishing lines and colours gradually disappear as

railroads, steamboats and electric trolleys penetrate remote districts. With any

influx of curious strangers there comes in time, often all too quickly, a regrettable

self-consciousness, which is followed at first by an awkward imitation of the

cosmopolitan garb.

We recall our experience in Hungary. Having been advised to visit the peasant

villages and farms lying out on the püstas (plains of southern Hungary) if we would

see the veritable national costumes, we set out hopefully with letters of introduction

from a minister of education in Buda Pest, directed to mayors of Magyar villages.

One of these planned a visit to a local celebrity, a Magyar farmer, very old, very

prosperous, rich in herds of horses, sheep and magnificent Hungarian oxen, large,

white and with almost straight, spreading horns, like the oxen of the ancient

Greeks. There we met a man of the old school, nearly eighty, who had never in his

life slept under cover, his duty being to guard his flocks and herds by night as well

as day, though he had amassed what was for his station in life, a great fortune. He

had never been seen in anything but the national costume, the same as worn in his

part of the world for several hundred years. And so we went to see him in his home.

We were all expectation! You can imagine our disappointment, when, upon arrival,

we found our host awaiting us, painfully attired in the ordinary dark cloth coat and

trousers of the modern farmer the world over. He had donned the ugly things in our

honour, taking an hour to make his toilet, as we were secretly informed by one of

the household. We tell this to show how one must persevere in the pursuit of artistic

data. This was the same occasion cited in The Art of Interior Decoration, when the

highly decorative peasant tableware was banished by the women in the house, to

make room, again in our honour, for plain white ironstone china.

The feeling for line accredited to the French woman is equally the birthright of the

Magyar--woman and man. One sees it in the dash of the court beauty who can

carry off a mass of jewels, barbaric in splendour, where the average European or

American would feel a Christmas tree in the same. And no man in Europe wears his

uniform as the Hungarian officer of hussars does; the astrachan-trimmed short coat,

slung over one shoulder, cap trimmed with fur, on the side of his head, and skin-

tight trousers inside of faultless, spurred boots reaching to the knees. One can go so

far as to say there is something decorative in the very temperament of Hungarian

women, a fiery abandon, which makes line in a subtle way quite apart from the line

of costume. This quality is also possessed by the Spanish woman, and developed to

a remarkable degree in the professional Spanish dancer. The Gipsy woman has it

too,--she brought it with her from Asia, as the Magyar's forebears did.

Speaking of the Magyar, nothing so perfectly expresses the national temperament

as the czardas--that peasant dance which begins with calm, stately repression, and

ends in a mad ecstasy of expression, the rapid crescendo, the whirl, ending when

the man seizes his partner and flings her high in the air. Watch the flash of the eyes

and see that this is genuine temperament, not acting, but something inherent in the

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