XVI
When Will Lady-Fashions Get
Ashamed of Themselves?
To Editor N. Y. Newsprint or whoever prints it
Dear Sir:—Of lately I have been studying American style of fashions for ladies, so I shall know your civilization from both ends. It are a very hard science to chase and in doing so I annexed my acquaintance to Miss Alice Furaoki, to who I shall become engaged when divorced. This sweet-hearted Japanese schoolgirl dress so similar to American actresses you cannot tell her from white lady, except when you look at her.
Last Satday eve p.m., when I was accomplishing her down street for see emotion-picture show, price 10c, I felt very Vanderbiltish to walk so near to Newport dressmaking. My eye hooked itself to her clothing and remained there till—O sudden!—I observe what was. I blushed entirely yellow.
“Excuse, please, Hon. Miss Sweetheart,” I gollup. “Your dressmake has axidentally forgot to sew up the ankle of your skirt so I observe something deranged.”
“What derangement do you observe?” she require with Vassar eyebrows.
“Not sure,” I stotter. “It seems to resemble the biceps of your hosiery.”
“That biceps is situated where it usually is,” she otter clamly like an ice box.
“Should it be ashamed?” I ask shockly.
“It are style,” she decry, “and style are never ashamed. Togo, why should you stand there gasping like Queen Victoria seeing Paris? This garments I are wearing are called a gashed skirt and is now very favorite at Newport, and Jewport, on Fifth & Sixth Avenues. Queen Mary of London wore one (very slightly) while giving Ice Cream Social to Knights of the Garter. In Paris it were even more so, as usual. Two French countesses from Minneapolis appeared tired out in this costume at Long Chumps race-course and everybody was so asphyxiated by charm they forgot to lose their money.”
“Horses must feel very slow when racing against such style,” I report nervely. “I am alarmed to think to where fashions will jump to nextly.”
“More will soonly explode from Vienna where a gentleman-dressmake have invented a dress all of glass,” she narrate with smiling eyebrows. “It will be worn in beautiful green shades.”
“Green shades are necessary to pull down sometimes when you are living in glass clothing,” I say so for Elbert Hubbard smartness.
Miss Furaoki make no intellectual reply, so we arrive inside emotion-picture show to see that noiseless opera. I think I shall marry her sooner than ever.
Mr. Editor, Hon. Anthony Comestop and other celebrated purities is continuously complaining because female ladies is becoming too much seen in public places. Women is becoming too brave and their skirts too shrinking. Hon. Comestop, who are not so strong as he were before he took up modesty as a business, fainted 2½ times when he seen photos of Lady Bluff-Gorgon’s latest style-simpony entitled “Spring Twilight” and he have ordered entire U. S. Army to encamp at Custom House to stop it when she send over Fall-style walking-suit called “September Morn.”
Considerable ministers, judges and boss policemen has been talking like angry uncles to ladies because of the increasing decrease of their clothing. I read in news-print last week how Hon. Judge Killjoy of Salem, Mass., wish to burn all witches under 27 years of age for bewitching gentlemen by the clothes they don’t wear. Last week he order Hon. Police to grabb all ladies wearing dangerous skirts, but Hon. Police were too lazy to arrest entire female population, so he brought Village Belle into court, because she looked most so.
Hon. Judge observe that lady’s clingstone appearance and put on eye-spectacles, because must see careful.
“Mrs. Madam,” he report legally like Hon. Taft, “I are not astonished that there are such delicious quantities of Cubist artists in this generation. They are the only artists which can paint modern ladydress so it conceals them sifficiently.”
“Do you not like what I got on?” she require.
“I do not object to such smallish matters,” he negligee. “It is for the absent that I mourn.”
“I are dressed in style,” she dib feminitely.
“You are dressed in very little else,” he legalize. “I should die of shames if I should see my Wife promenading in street clad in such a lack.”
“I do not blame you,” she snagger snubbishly. “I once saw your Wife in bathing suit and can sympathize with you.”
Hon. Judge feel considable contempt of court for this remark, yet he could not hang her, because her style had not killed anybody yet.
“Who is it buys the purchase of your wardrobe, such as is?” he ask to know.
“My husband,” she pronounce.
“I shall arrest him for failure to provide,” he renig hashly. So he lock up court in time to go codfish.
Mr. Editor, numberous reformers is making weep-voice because ladies is coming out in worse & worse. Yet I are less alarmed. Styles is like other forms of advertisement—they are made to create look-at, and when this stop, they stop also. Ladyfashions is always worse than formerly, yet never so bad as they was. If you think 1913 is hideolous, look at 1880; if you think that ugliferous, observe 1870. Before the Uncivil War considerable preachers made considerable shock because ladies wore their lingeries next to their shoes. In reign of Gen. Arthur gentlemen enjoyed much sorrow because ladies wore their skirts in Psyche knots behind their backs. And now they create peev because ladies does not wear sifficiently enough anywheres.
At what periodical time of civilization have not mankind scolded ladykind for something she took on or put off? You would think from how they act that gentlemen must detest ladies for looking so homely. Yet suicide, divorce & population increases annually, which show that ladies can never dress too fashionable to be loved by someone.
Hoping you are the same,
Yours truly,
Hashimura Togo.