daughter of
her French milliner to say that a box of bonnets had arrived from Paris.
Mamma had not yet unpacked them and if she would come at once, she might
have her pick of the treasures, and Mamma not know until too late to
interfere. And this was only back in the 50's, we should say.

Then think of the hoops, and wigs and absurdly furbished head-dresses;
paper-soled shoes, some intended only to _sit_ in; bonnets enormous;
laces of cobweb; shawls from India by camel and sailing craft; rouge,
too, and hair grease, patches and powder; laced waists and cramped feet;
low necks and short sleeves for children in school-rooms.

Man was then still decorative here and in western Europe. To-day he is
not decorative, unless in sports clothes or military uniform; woman's
garments furnish all the colour. Whistler circumvented this fact when
painting Theodore Duret (Metropolitan Museum) in sombre black
broadcloth,--modern evening attire, by flinging over the arm of Duret,
the delicate pink taffeta and chiffon cloak of a woman, and in M.
Duret's hand he places a closed fan of pomegranate red.

CHAPTER XX

SEX IN COSTUMING

"European dress" is the term accepted to imply the costume of man and
woman which is entirely cosmopolitan, decrying continuity of types (of
costume) and thoroughly plastic in the hands of fashion.

To-day, we say parrot-like, that certain materials, lines and colours
are masculine or feminine. They are so merely by association. The modern
costuming of man the world over, if he appear in European dress (we
except court regalia), is confined to cloth, linen or cotton, in black,
white and inconspicuous colours; a prescribed and simple type of
neckwear, footwear, hat, stick, and hair cut.

The progenitor of the garments of modern men was the
Lutheran-Puritan-Revolutionary garb, the hall-mark of democracy.

It is true that when silk was first introduced into Europe, from the
Orient, the Greeks and early Romans considered it too effeminate for
man's use, but this had to do with the doctrine of austere denial for
the good of the state. To wear the costume of indolence implied
inactivity and induced it. As a matter of fact, some of the master
spirits of Greece did wear silks.

In Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Media, Persia and the Far East, men and women
wore the same materials, as in China and Japan to-day. Egyptian men and
their contemporaries throughout Byzantium, wore gowns, in outline
identical with t