The psychology of dress / [Frank Alvah Parsons].

  • Parsons, Frank Alvah, 1868-1930.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of dress / [Frank Alvah Parsons]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    has life been more devoid of grace and never was taste at a lower ebb. There was much intellectual activity, however, and domestic economy flourished, as their record in litera¬ ture and national expression proves, though there ap¬ pears to have been a total annihilation of the art sense and of the charm that is born of the social graces. So far as details of costume are concerned during this period, at court they were in perfect form'’ and in ordinary life they were “proper.” It is rather to call this period to mind, to acknowledge its aims and its achievements, and to see anew its results in art through a knowledge of the qualities most active, and of those most dominant or most stifled, that it is correlated here with the corresponding styles in France and America. Having done this, let us return to the period of Louis Philippe and of the Second Empire, for Paris was then, as ever, the seat of fashion, and so far as this invincible goddess wielded conscious power, it came from France. In so far too, as the art quality was active it had no other asylum than in the minds of the French, who, in spite of revolutions, cataclysms and catastrophies were never entirely without it. It was in 1852 that Napoleon III was seated on the throne and the second Empire began. The style, developed from this date to 1870 and known as the Second Empire style, is the last of the monarchic styles of France and indeed of modern life so far as our civiliza¬ tion is concerned. The marriage of the Emperor with the Spaniard, Eugenie, resulted in the establishment at the Tuileries of a new and positive dictation of customs and of fashions, which had for its aim, so far as possible,