Dress-reform : a series of lectures delivered in Boston, on dress as it affects the health of women.

  • Woolson, Abba Goold, 1838-1921.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dress-reform : a series of lectures delivered in Boston, on dress as it affects the health of women. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto.

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    cheeks with red paint, wear strings of shells about their necks, and in all thinijs mistake toir- gery for grace. Men have rid their dress of such unworthy gewgaws ; and since we seem to fol- low slowly after their styles, adopting into our costume many minor features of their dress, we shall in time discard heathenish baubles for something less suited to childish tastes. Waist of the Dress. — In the waist of the Gabrielle dress, biases should be recognized only so far as they are useful in outlining the natural form : they must never serve as acces- sories to that compression of the waist which has become so pernicious. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in that brilliant and suggestive mono- graph entitled What to Wear, which has done such valiant service in the cause of dress- reform, does well to insist that plain biased waists have much to answer for in the tortures inflicted upon women by their dress. Her charges are none too strong. Nature is so directly at variance with this feature of our apparel, that it seems invented only to aid and