"On Fashion"
by Mary MacLane

(Note: this is an excerpt of a longer original article; it will be made complete shortly. The title below is that which is given in the original newspaper. It probably was not MacLane's original title. M.R.B.)



Let the fashions be what they will, there's always a fascination in clothes. They reflect not only the follies and fads, the trend of thought, even in a qualified degree the literature and art of their day. They reflect, too, the make and manner and moods of their own wearers in away at once subtle and illuminating.

It's as if fashion worked in its own despite. We all simply have got to follow the fashion, of course - or else be content to enjoy a popularity commensurate with that of corpses in coffins. But fifty women clad in exactly the same, perhaps delicately barbarous, mode of the hour, will wear it in fifty more widely differing ways, thus revealing their individualities, than if each were dressed regardless, to match her temperament, morals, character, or brains. You might have to look them over more carefully in order to recognize this fact, but you would recognize it - if your intuition is in good working trim. For, look you, if there were no such thing as Fashion, with a big F, and we were each allowed to choose our own style, most of us would studiously affect clothes which would conceal as nearly as possible the trend of our minds. It's the tendency of human nature to try to appear what it is not.

The grande dame wishes to give an impression of simplicity of philosophy and life. The dairy maid inclines to the sheet-iron corset and amber velvet school of thought. The fat shopwoman would fain show herself a poetry sylph in, say, a hand-embroidered Chinese coat. The so-called immoral woman of leathern conscience would dress in a way to convince the world that she is "all heart" - white India muslin with snow-drops at her breast. The literary woman, as a rule, would wear the panoply of the chorus girl. The chorus girl with - who knows? - a secret sight of relief, would don a frumpy blouse and a lopsided suit and a facial expression of sanity and sense. The fourteen-year-old girl would wear anything which seemed to her sufficiently unwieldy to feel grown up. Her revolutionary, youth-pursuing grandmother would climb into a harem suit.

Absinthe-drinking young women artists and literati would wear the schoolgirlishest of serge skirts and middy blouses, with fillets of pallid ribbon round their devoted heads. Thus it would run. We would each have our bluff to put up, and uncon- sciously, we would each mentally "call" our neighbor's bluff. But - we would deceive uncounted legions of men.

But with a single prevailing fashion for all of us we willy-nilly reveal ourselves. Night brings out the stars, as any high school senior will tell you. Since we must all dress alike, it devolves upon us to assert our individual style at least to the extent of wearing our gay garments different from - and better than - everybody else. And in asserting ourselves we reveal ourselves.

In other words, a shop girl, if she makes a "noise" in the way of clothes, can only make a noise like a shop girl-be her modish, million-times-duplicated frock ever so skin tight. But in clothes of her own planning and designing as to line and texture and color, who shall say that she couldn't make, in the busy marts of men, a sound like a naiad, a Chinese band, a vision of Theophile Gautier, all in one? Who shall say she wouldn't be number one, class A, in delicate incongruities?

No, let nobody run away with the idea that clothes are unimportant, or a trivial factor.

Still, and after all, what's the use? We are completely at the mercy of the man rnilliners. With a blind and absolute submissiveness we wear whatever they plan, and sally forth in it like lambs to the slaughter, though it work our undoing. And even now they may be planning monstrosities, whether of wigs and farthingales are but trifling adjuncts, to pay for having arrayed us like goddesses in the summer and fall of Nineteen Eleven.



works index
maclane index
domain index

"On Fashion"
"On Fashion"
by Mary MacLane

(Note: this is an excerpt of a longer original article; it will be made complete shortly. The title below is that which is given in the original newspaper. It probably was not MacLane's original title. M.R.B.)



Let the fashions be what they will, there's always a fascination in clothes. They reflect not only the follies and fads, the trend of thought, even in a qualified degree the literature and art of their day. They reflect, too, the make and manner and moods of their own wearers in away at once subtle and illuminating.

It's as if fashion worked in its own despite. We all simply have got to follow the fashion, of course - or else be content to enjoy a popularity commensurate with that of corpses in coffins. But fifty women clad in exactly the same, perhaps delicately barbarous, mode of the hour, will wear it in fifty more widely differing ways, thus revealing their individualities, than if each were dressed regardless, to match her temperament, morals, character, or brains. You might have to look them over more carefully in order to recognize this fact, but you would recognize it - if your intuition is in good working trim. For, look you, if there were no such thing as Fashion, with a big F, and we were each allowed to choose our own style, most of us would studiously affect clothes which would conceal as nearly as possible the trend of our minds. It's the tendency of human nature to try to appear what it is not.

The grande dame wishes to give an impression of simplicity of philosophy and life. The dairy maid inclines to the sheet-iron corset and amber velvet school of thought. The fat shopwoman would fain show herself a poetry sylph in, say, a hand-embroidered Chinese coat. The so-called immoral woman of leathern conscience would dress in a way to convince the world that she is "all heart" - white India muslin with snow-drops at her breast. The literary woman, as a rule, would wear the panoply of the chorus girl. The chorus girl with - who knows? - a secret sight of relief, would don a frumpy blouse and a lopsided suit and a facial expression of sanity and sense. The fourteen-year-old girl would wear anything which seemed to her sufficiently unwieldy to feel grown up. Her revolutionary, youth-pursuing grandmother would climb into a harem suit.

Absinthe-drinking young women artists and literati would wear the schoolgirlishest of serge skirts and middy blouses, with fillets of pallid ribbon round their devoted heads. Thus it would run. We would each have our bluff to put up, and uncon- sciously, we would each mentally "call" our neighbor's bluff. But - we would deceive uncounted legions of men.

But with a single prevailing fashion for all of us we willy-nilly reveal ourselves. Night brings out the stars, as any high school senior will tell you. Since we must all dress alike, it devolves upon us to assert our individual style at least to the extent of wearing our gay garments different from - and better than - everybody else. And in asserting ourselves we reveal ourselves.

In other words, a shop girl, if she makes a "noise" in the way of clothes, can only make a noise like a shop girl-be her modish, million-times-duplicated frock ever so skin tight. But in clothes of her own planning and designing as to line and texture and color, who shall say that she couldn't make, in the busy marts of men, a sound like a naiad, a Chinese band, a vision of Theophile Gautier, all in one? Who shall say she wouldn't be number one, class A, in delicate incongruities?

No, let nobody run away with the idea that clothes are unimportant, or a trivial factor.

Still, and after all, what's the use? We are completely at the mercy of the man rnilliners. With a blind and absolute submissiveness we wear whatever they plan, and sally forth in it like lambs to the slaughter, though it work our undoing. And even now they may be planning monstrosities, whether of wigs and farthingales are but trifling adjuncts, to pay for having arrayed us like goddesses in the summer and fall of Nineteen Eleven.



works index
maclane index
domain index