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.

    508/540 (page 336)
    styles. It is neither new nor strange to find “the trade’’ or the proletariat bent upon outdoing the socially prominent in dress. In 1872 there was published in London, in the “Lady’s Magazine,” a letter written to the editor by a reputable trade grocer, who thus expressed himself: “I wish to God you would write something smart against fashion. My family is almost ruined by the article of dress. . . . Perhaps in nature, there never was such a figure! Only fashion to yourself a greengrocer’s wife issuing from her cellar in Drury Lane, with a monstrous hoop, exposing a pair of legs, the ankles as thick as the calf, and the calf as thick as the modern waist; her hair bepuddened, her cheeks bedaubed with red, her neck of a crimson hue, her arms bursting through a pair of white gloves, the contrast between the two skins being almost the very opposite to each other; a thick-flowered silk exposing the whole front of a quilted petticoat that once was white, and then you have the appearance of my wife! Her daughters made as ridiculous a figure, and Will, I do assure you, was not the least remarkable in the group.” This heart to heart talk brought out in the next issue the following scathing reply from “a lady contributor,” who evidently harked back to St. Edith of earlier fame, and forward to the modern “Inquiries and Correspond¬ ence” columns of our popular dailies and monthlies: “I think it is high time, then, for every female to exert a little knowledge she may be possessed of in the scribbling line, when the wits, under the characters of Green Grocers, dare to insult us, and speak of our hoops and other parts of our dresses, as freely as they exercise their authority over the ostlers at a country inn.