To the editor, “London Life.”
Dear Sir, – Will you kindly allow me to contribute to your forthcoming “Fashion Number”? I am convinced that those readers who crave for a return to Victorian fashions do not realise what such a change would mean.
Imagine the modern healthy girl, suddenly transformed into the pale, wasp-waisted, crinolined, veiled and gloved “young lady” of Victorian days.
Just as the fashionable ladies of to-day devotes her time to “slimming,” so the lady of my younger days applied every method known to her in an effort to attain the modish wasp waist.
I ask the loosely-clothed, happy girl of to-day to compare her toilette with the one worn by myself at a smart garden party soon after my eighteenth birthday.
The day was broiling, and mother occupied two hours in preparing me. My long hair was dressed over uncomfortable pads with an enormous “bun” at the back of my head.
My hat was a large veritable flower garden, kept in position by numerous hat-pins, and a heavy veil covered my face to “protect my complexion”; a sunshade was, of course, necessary.
My dress of pale grey satin had leg-o’-mutton sleeves, and a collar so high and tight as to make me hold my head unnaturally high.
I wore a large “bustle,” and from waist to floor, my dress fell in cascades of flounces. Four stiff silk petticoats gave me the necessary “fulness” to my dress. The bodice of my dress was, of course, well-boned, and fitted fearfully tightly over my stays, and such stays! Worn for the first time, and fitted with heavy, stiff whalebones, only half-an-inch apart.
In this vice my “dainty” waist had been squeezed in to a measurement of fifteen inches over my stays, and a belt added to my agony. Gloved in unyielding kid, and wearing much too small shoes, which had four inch heels and pinched “beautifully,” I put on a feather boa, and slowly strolled about with mother, who, of course, was “enjoying” similar agony.
The conversation at tea time was, of course, “dress” and “servants,” and each lady was careful to explain that owing to the unusually hot weather she was wearing quite loose stays, when, as a fact, every waist had been specially forced in and tortured to the limit of endurance. One heard: “No, dear, I am inches smaller usually, but, really, the weather, etc., etc.”
When some lady was overcome and swooned, the weather was responsible, not her torturing stays. I hope the foregoing will help turn your Victorian advocates from their unreasonable views.
In wishing you every success, dear sir, I beg to say how very delightful your charming journal is.
Yours faithfully,
IRENE BEESON