and the solemn are discarded at the same time by both dress and architecture, ' rococo ' toilettes, and furbelowed buildings—it is all one.
At a later date, when the people of the
Ululer the Great Kiug.
Revolutionary Period and the First Empire arrayed themselves in Greek and Roman fashion, public buildings and houses did the same. From 1840 to 1860, a period of transition and expectation, both fashions and buikliDgs were absolutely commonplace, and destitute of any style wliatsoever.
Lastly, in our own time, a period of archaeological research and general rummage, of experiments and reconstitution, a period of imitation rather than imagination and creation, we again observe architecture and fashion keeping step, grojjing together in the clothes-chests of the past, trying-on all styles, one after another, falling in love with each period in succession, and adopting its forms only to throw them aside immediately. Let us then do as our time does, let us too ransack the clothes-chests of the past in our search for the pretty things and the oddities of long long ago.
Beyond a certain period authentic documents are scarce, and we have to be satisfied with suppositions. Who shall tell us truly what were the costumes, the fashions, and the general aspect of life as presented by them, in tlie Merovingian and Carlovingian days, when—
Four harness'd oxen, heavy-hoofed and slow, Through Paris dragged the King, a lazy show. '
Who shall depict for us the finery of those obscure periods ? Finery there was, in spite of their rudeness and barbarism, for we find the old chroniclers in their writings already denouncing the unbounded extravagance of women.
Who shall paint for us the ladies of the time of Charlemagne, and instruct us in the modish ways of the tenth century ? The few statues which have come down to us, more or less mutilated, constitute our only documents ; we must content ourselves with them, and with the vague indications contained in the rude illustrations of the manuscripts of that period, so much earlier than the superb illuminations with which the artists of the Middle Ages enriched the world in a later day.
Our first Fashion-plate, then, will be some cathedral door, or statue from a tomb, that has Quatre hœufs attelés, d'un pas tranquille et lent, Promenaient dans Paris le monarque indolent.
YESTER-YEAR.
miraculously escaped the ravages of time and the hammer of the iconoclasts, whether of ' the Religion ' or the Revolution.
Uuder Louis (^>uiuze.
At a later period, miniatures, painted wimlows, and tapestries, will furnish us with more complete and certain information, an(i far more precise figures ; ' documents ' will abound.
Besides, in the fourteenth century the actual fashion-plate existed. It had not adopted the ' gazette ' shape (that has been in use for a hundred years only), but it was a journal of fashion nevertheless. Instruction in tho mode travelled, under the form of dolls Avearing model costumes, from one country to another, esi^ecially from Paris.
Paris already held the sceptre, and ruled over fashion, although not as she now rules from pole to pole, from the frozen shores of America to Australia—where bits of bone passed through the nasal cartilage were the only homage paid to vanity little more than fifty years ago—from the courts of the Rajahs of India to the seraglio of the Grand Turk, and the palace of Her Majesty the Empress of the Flowery Land.
In the middle ages, certain great ladies of our dear little corner of Europe, used to present each other with small dolls, dressed in the latest fashion by ' cutters/ dressmakers and tailors whose names have not come down to posterity.
Thus, on great occasions, the duchess in her distant château on the Breton ' Landes,' or the Margravine perched upon her rock on the Rhine border, would learn more or less rapidly what was the latest feat of fashion in great centres of luxury and elegance, such as the Court of Paris or the Court of Burgundy. These were rivals in novelty and display, as we learn from the accounts of expenditure that have been brought to light, with the details of the sumptuous doings which dazzled contemporaries, and are recorded by all the chroniclers of the time.
Certain important towns also received the decrees of fashion by similar means. For centuries, Venice, another centre of the sumptuary arts, and a connecting link between Eastern commerce and Western luxury, annually imported a Parisian doll. It was of imme-morial custom to exhibit the waxen image cf a Parisian lady, attired in the last fashion, on Ascension Day, under the arcades of tlic ' Merceria,' at the end of the Piazza of St. Mark, as " the toilette of the year," for the edification of the noble Venetian dames who eagerly flocked to the show.
Uudcr Louis XII.
Escofiioii.
III.
THE MIDDLE AGES.
The painted and tatooed Gauls—The first corsets and tlie first false-plaits—The first sumptuary edicts— Byzantine influence—' Bliauds,' surcoats, and ' cottes hardies '—Pictorial and emblazoned gowns—The ordinances of Philip the Fair—' Hennins ' and ' Escoffions '—The Crusade of Brother Thomas Connecte against the ' hennin '—The ' Lady of Beautj'.'
It must be boldly acknowledged that two thousand years ago, in this very Paris, which bears the standard of elegance, and triumphantly flaunts it everywhere, the predecessors of our Parisian ladies walked in the vast dark forest that stretched from the banks of the Seine to those of the Oise, and along the borders of the Ardennes, in one vast and tangled ''Bois de Boulogne," clothed in a style which closely resembles that of the Maori belles of to-day.
Those rough and handsome Gaulish dames were daubed with paint, and probably tatooed ; at all events, that they dyed their hair is certain.
The ornaments which have been discovered, fibulœ, torques, necklaces, bracelets, clasps in bronze and occasionally in silver or gold, afford evidence that those primitive semi-savages were accustomed to a certain kind of luxury. There is a great analogy between their style of ornamentation, and that which prevails in Brittany at the present day.
Ancient Gaul Gaul of the Barbarians, having become Roman Gaul, the Gaulish women, in imitation of tlie Roman, speedily exhibited a taste for all tho refinements of civilization and luxury. Ladies ! the corset dates from their time, but it was a corslet of thick stuff which moulded the form, rather than an instrument of torture which distorted its lines.
The primitive love of vivid colouring did not decline at once ; but actual paint became merely rougeing, and essences for preserving tlie complexion, and also false plaits, had already been invented. These locks, of a reddish-fair hue—the same colour has been in fashion for a long time past—were purchased from German peasant girls, the Gretchens of the time of Arminius.
The invasions of the Franks were followed by a return to barbarism and simplicity ; their women, who were big and strong, knew of no greater luxury in dress than a chemise strij)ed with purple.
Little by httle, tho Roman fashions, mingled with tlie Gaulish, the Frankish, and the Merovingian fashions, of which a few stiff and hieratic statues give us a notion, underwent a transformation.
The great Emperor Charlemagne, he of the flowing beard, in the midst of his Court, where the wives of his dukes and counts indulged the most unbridled taste for adornment, sumptuous stuffs and jewellery, observed a strict simplicity of attire for himself, as Frederick the Great and Napoleon did also. He was shocked by the growth of display and extravagance, and lie was the author of the first sumptuary laws, which were naturally observed only by the bourgeoises; those good ladies did not require prohibitions to dej)rive themselves of finery which they could not purchase for lack of money.