Chapter VII
Decorative Art, Trimmings, and Ornament
THE IMPULSE to decorate the work of one's hands is a human one, not peculiar to either sex. So long as the primitive woman monopolized creative industry, making all the things that were made, she also monopolized decorative art. Hers were the designs in pottery, in basketry, in beadwork, leatherwork, and needlework. But when man began to make things he also felt that racial impulse to adorn his work, and to carve on tool, or weapon, an added ornament.
This human impulse is to be traced in costume, quite aside from the original masculine impulse to increase his impressiveness by external splendors, or the transplanted unnatural appearance of that masculine impulse in the female of our species.
No slightest observation of modern woman's dress can overlook the preponderance of ornament. It is not enough that she be clothed, that her clothing in texture, in color, in pattern, and in craftsmanship shall be, to her mind, beautiful; but she adds to the clothing, decoration; and, still further, to her decorated clothing, she adds distinct articles, not in the least garments, but mere ornaments—or things so considered.
The normal growth of decorative art in textiles is a beautiful study. From simple patterns in weaving to the intricate glories of lace and brocade; from the first crude dyes to the blended loveliness of Oriental rugs; from the earliest variation in stitches to the rich efflorescence of Japanese embroidery, we have a world of interest and true aesthetic pleasure. The evolution of textile art is complex and exquisite; it is also natural, as natural as any pre-human effort of evolution. Lace, for instance, as a separate product, may be traced backward through ever simpler forms, to the crudest beginnings of loose threads, knot work, drawn work and the like. To make the decoration separate and sew it on was a very late step. A bit of rich lace, found among the excavated relics of some lost culture, would prove it one long established.
Since woman was the first, and for all history up to the most recent times, the only worker in textiles, we may so account for her special sensitiveness to beauty in this form. In Japan, where the gorgeous embroidery is made by men, the intense appreciation is also felt, and the embroidered garment also worn, by men. In our race we have just ground for the women's special feeling for fine fabrics, even after they are no longer made by her. The looms of M. Jacquard, the "mules" and “jennys" and all the new machinery which has made man "the spinster” of today, are too recent to have robbed her of hereditary sensitiveness to textile art.'
Yet, even after allowing to the full for this special taste of hers, it does not account for such unmeasured indulgence of this taste as allows the decorative quality of an article of clothing, or an accessory to obscure or contradict its use, as in the lace handkerchief.
There are certain laws of decoration, certain principles which govern applied beauty, and woman as a human creature, as a civilized and educated member of modern society, ought to recognize these laws. If a handkerchief was a thing to pin on one's hat as an ornament, or to carry on the end of a stick as a symbol of elegance, then it might be well composed of sheer lace, or of spun glass, or of any light and showy substance. As a piece of cambric used to dry one's—tears, we will say, it has absolute limitations. Not to recognize them is to show one's ignorance of the use of handkerchiefs or of the principles of decoration.
The dress of women, in its unbridled excesses in ornamentation; in its exaggerated pursuance of the motives of delicacy, softness, fineness, and others, plainly exhibits, first, the natural appreciation of textile art and its decorative development; and, second, the lack of true aesthetic training and judgment.
The man's beauty sense, prompting him to personal display as a male, is checked by his judgment as well as by necessity. The woman's, not as gaudy and violent to begin with, is more riotous in expression because necessity does not so directly limit it, and she has, quite apparently, a less effective judgment.
A good illustrative instance is here given. A dressmaker, a woman, made for the approving wear of another woman, this garment. The fabric was a soft fine muslin of a pale yellow tint, covered with a rich pattern of cloudy clustering cherries, in shaded tints of rose, from faint pink to red. In general effect the muslin was beautiful in color; on closer examination it was beautiful in fabric and design. It would seem needless to say that such a material used as a garment should be so cut and arranged as to show all these beauties. The wearer should walk in a rosy cloud, as it were, the delicate tissue sweeping softly as a light veil, floating as the wearer walked. If heavier stuff were needed beneath, the muslin should have flowed freely over it. Here is what the dressmaker made and the proud co-creator and purchaser wore.
The bodice was made as a tight-fitted “five-seam basque," using a thick cream-colored satine as a lining. Such cutting, of course, dislocated the pattern completely, cutting across it in arbitrary lines. It utterly destroved the effect of the fabric, which might have been a stiff chintz for all the observer knew at a little distance.
The skirt had first a foundation of the same thick satine, stiffened to the knee with a white coarse substance—underneath, of course—and bound with braid. This underpinning hung and moved about as gracefully as if it were made of leather. Upon it the exquisite muslin was arranged in this way: At the back it was bunched together—material perhaps six or seven feet long upholstered in a series of irregular close-set puffs, so as to be fastened to that “back breadth." Down the front and around the hem were a series of alternate rows of “knife-pleatings." fine regular close-set mechanical hard-pressed narrow folds, about four inches deep, first of a cream-colored plain muslin, stiffer than the figured one, but not so stiff as the satine, and then of the soft muslin itself—knife-pleatings of that rich soft cloud of drooping cherries! All up and down the front ran this thatch of pleatings, and four deep around the hem.
Not satisfied with all this industry, there was then brought into the scheme a quantity of—what think vou? What would go well with delicate muslin, as a trimming? The beauty of this muslin was so apparent that it visibly needed none; but the dressmaker thought differently. She selected crimson velvet. In the narrow form, as velvet ribbon, it was bobbed and bowed and knotted everywhere, across the bodice, down the front of the skirt, about the sleeves. The collar, I should not forget to say, was a close straight-standing one made of the velvet. But the most conspicuous feature of this masterpiece remains to be mentioned. On either side of that shingled front breadth were “panels" of the crimson velvet,—large, long, flat pieces, extending from the belt to the pleated ruffles, two stiff slabs of heavy velvet, sewed onto a skirt of delicate muslin! As a minor detail of artistry I may add that this work of textile torture was accomplished with thread coarse enough to hold suspender buttons. As an instance of the proportion between woman's amount of beauty sense, of the special feminine feeling for fine fabrics, and of the extraneous pressure of the masculine tendency toward gorgeousness; of the desire to exhibit “conspicuous waste” in labor and material, and the brutal irrelevancy of a temporary fashion, I have never known anything better than this murdered muslin.
Of late years we have frequently seen this same insane mixture of discordant motives in what is after all the last epitome of outrage in textile decoration—fur on lace.
Let any woman who has in her head even the crushed and crippled rudiments of artistic feeling study for a few moments what lace is and what fur is.
Lace is the highest, subtlest, most exquisitely delicate of all textile fabrics. It is the slowly evolved product of many ages of loving and intelligent labor. To make it requires a high degree of craftsmanship. To understand, admire and wisely select it shows a high degree of taste. To wear it, appropriately, indicates conditions of sheltered ease and safety, and of high occasion.
Fur is the hide and hair of a beast. It was worn by the cave man, who covered his shivering body with the warm skin of his victims. It is still worn, exclusively, by the Arctic savages, partly because of its saving warmth, partly because they have no other materials at hand. It is also worn by the Russian mujik, for similar reasons—a sheepskin coat is warm, is quickly made, and will wear a long time—without washing.
Fur is the main dependence of savages in all cold countries, and is equally useful to pioneers of any race, though the Shackleton Antarctic expedition, I have understood, found woven flannel goods lighter and warmer.?
Fur requires no artistic effort to produce, no dreaming of lovely designs, no sublimated skill in execution. To get fur you only have to kill an animal, tear off his skin, and prepare it.
Fur is at the very bottom of the ladder, the long, long series of steps by which the costume of modern humanity differs from the rude coverings of primitive savagery.
As materials for clothing, that is the difference between fur and lace.
As a matter of artistry, lace is the uttermost margin of decoration. The body must be covered with stronger fabrics, of closer texture; only at the borders, especially where delicate arms and hands appear, or white neck rises like Aphrodite from the foam, are the filmy folds, the snow-crystal patterns of lace appropriate.
To take this ultimate faint border of beauty and fasten upon it a strip of hairy hide is like hanging curbstones along the white tips of a pergola.
Decoration has its laws, like any form of art. When used upon a variety of fabrics it has a variety of forms, but there are principles of truth in each. The exigencies of construction modify somewhat the more severe application of these decorative principles. It is true that embroidery upon the garment as a garment is nobler than when it is applied promiscuously upon the material, and then cut to pieces and sewed together again. It is nobler because it indicates a higher degree of foresight, and because the patterns, so applied, may be more perfectly adapted to the structural limits of the garment.
Nevertheless the application of detached trimmings, while admittedly easier and cheaper, is not in itself offensive if the applied decoration is appropriate.
Our general failure is in perception of what is appropriate; in any keen sense of values and harmonies. As the medieval tailors devised a false method of decoration in “slashes"—cutting totally unnecessary holes in the fabric to arbitrarily exhibit some rich stuff below, so we today cut and trim and tag and button without the faintest conceptions that there are any principles involved.
A woman of high breeding would not mix her speech with slang or indecency; she would note at once a jangle of methods in literature if Meterlinck suddenly lapsed into the style of O. Henry, or Henry sank to Chambers.+ She would be pained and shocked at any such discord in music, and contemptuously amused at it if exhibited in setting a table. She would not place a Shaker rocking-chair in a tapestried drawing room, or a yellow cooking bowl among Haviland china. But that same woman will wear lace “trimmed" with fur, and feel no faintest repulsion at the consummate outrage.
We speak of the impropriety of trying to “gild refined gold and paint the lily," but do not notice the impropriety of “trimming lace"—which is itself the lovely ultimate in trimming. Even if the lace were fringed with diamonds it would be a confusion of motives, but to fringe it with fur—!
Charles Reade, with his keen observation and vivid expression of opinion, cried out against the women of his time for spoiling the sheen and flow of silk or velvet by rigid crossing lines of band, ruffle and flounce. He was quite right. Yet beauty-loving woman feels no such objection. I have seen a velvet gown copiously ruffled, narrow curly velvet ruffles—about two inches deep.
Velvet, satin, brocade, or any richly patterned fabric, like that tormented cherry muslin, call for little or no decoration. To velvet, in its supreme richness, may be added only the white froth of rich lace, not sewed on as a trimming, but worn at neck and sleeves with the further enhancement of jewels.
Which brings us to another of the main departments of decoration, especially as applied to the dress of women.
The appreciation of shine and color is basic. The smallest child, the lowest savage, even the magpie and the crow, appreciate bright twinkling stones. Those who trade with savages carry beads, which are, to those poor purchasers, jewels. They know nothing of values. They have not reached the “conspicuous expenditure" period. They do not boastfully point out a certain Mrs. Savage as “wearing five hundred thousand dollars' worth of beads." But they do admire jewelry.
The precious stones, valued first for their color and sparkle, then as a permanent form of wealth; and the precious metals, similarly prized; have long been the heart's delight of both men and women. In Oriental races there is no sex-distinction in this matter. The Rajah shines and twinkles with his gemmed turban and ropes of pearls as well as the Ranee.
A beautiful art has grown up in the use of these materials. The goldsmith and silversmith, the carvers of cameo and intaglio, the cunning artificers in jewelry, have added much to the man-made beauty of our life.
We have here many distinct elements of appreciation. First the primal one; color and shine. Second, the sense of value; genuinely prized. Third, added to this last, the ostentatious display of expenditure. Fourth, the artist's love of lovely workmanship
We, in our modern use of jewels, have reached a stage of sexdistinction wherein this field of decoration is given over almost entirely to women. The man may have:
- numbers of scarfpins as valuable as he likes and can afford,
- studs and sleeve-links,
- a watch-chain or fob,
- finger rings.
There he stops, and even in these the element of color and shine is subdued. He may show a refined richness, but the big diamond shirt stud, the blazing ring, are marks of a low taste—for men.
Not so for women. They are given:
- brooches and “stick-pins" of all sorts,
- necklaces,
- bracelets,
- tiaras and all hair-ornaments,
- earrings,
- finger rings,
- studs, links, chains, etc.; and furthermore, a multitude of jewelled accessories.
Women are allowed, and happily exhibit, a far larger amount and a far more brilliant kind of jewelry, than men.
Why?
There is one line of approach to this condition, seen among those peasants, or harem beauties, or half-civilized tribes, where the woman carries the family fortune on her person, in silver anklets, or golden sequins.
Another, parallel with this, is the man's desire to enhance both the beauty and the value of his female property. Of two men, the one who can buy, steal, or otherwise secure a beautiful woman all glittering with gems, has accomplished more than the other whose prize does not glitter.
Veblen, in his unforgettable Theory of the Leisure Class, clearly shows this motive in all our modern life. While man to-day is denied any conspicuous gorgeousness in his own apparel, he is free to gratify his taste for it vicariously, and his wife, in her clothing and decoration, serves not only to please his eye, but to exhibit his wealth.
It redounds to a man's credit to have his wife well dressed. The better dressed she is, the more expensively dressed she is, the more it redounds. She does not pay for it. It is to his generosity and purchasing power that she owes her splendor.
The third and fourth reasons are even less creditable. Women as dependents are habituated from infancy to receive gifts. They seldom reach the degree of economic dignity which prefers to pay for its own clothing and decoration. There are mingled here two separate feelings; one the natural and harmless pleasure in receiving gifts from loved ones, quite proper in childhood, and to some degree in the adult; the other a sordid eagerness to get them, which belongs only to greedy infancy or frank parasitism.
Boy and girl alike, all small children ask for favors, tease for presents. Boys outgrow it. Girls do not. One would think that a grown woman would be shamed by having people buy things for her, bring her flowers, candy, jewels, she never reciprocating in kind.
Her reciprocation is of another kind, a kind well understood and expected. So long as she lives on gifts, having no purchasing power of her own; so long must she pay—as expected.
Back of all these is another uncomplimentary cause of woman's beaded splendor. She is, in social status, less highly developed than man. By birth always his equal, the conditions of her rearing are grossly unequal. In her dependence, her limited experience, her ruthless restriction to primitive impulses and few forms of expression, it is no wonder that certain low standards of social development survive in her, when her brother, living in a more advanced culture, has outgrown them.
A common instance of this is in that last remnant of adornment by mutilation, the perforated ear. Savages decorate their cattle by slitting ears and dewlaps, splitting or twisting horns, and decorate themselves by tattooing the skin, and by making holes in convenient parts, as ears, lips, noses.
Tattooing still appeals to boys, and to low-class men, earrings are still found on Sicilian sailors; but an educated American man would scorn to make holes in his tissues for decorative purposes. It is true that there is a concession made today in earrings which do not go through the lobe of the ear—only pretend to; our men despise even the pretense. It is high time that our women, in their present rapid development, should give attention to this field of growth as well as others. They do not seem to understand that a certain grade of eagerly expressed masculine admiration, while sweet and stimulating to receive, is quite compatible with an unexpressed masculine contempt for the childishness, the simple savagery, of the creature he is praising.
This savagery, this use of the body itself as a medium of decoration, is shown in that still enduring habit of women, once belonging to the ancient Briton, the naked redman, or African—painting the skin.
The blue-spotted Briton is long out of date; the savage is quite largely civilized, but woman, in the most advanced races, still maintains this early art, and paints her skin.
That she should admire beauty is right; that she should long for it is right; that she should take all legitimate measures to reach a higher standard of beauty is right; but that she should bleach and dye her hair, pencil her eyes, tint her claw-like fingernails, and apply powder and rouge to her skin, is merely a survival of methods so basely primitive that she ought to be ashamed of the taste which can allow them.
It has been stated that the reason why men admire painted women is because it so frankly shows the wish to please, and that the more frankly it shows, the more violently and crudely it is done, the more flattering to masculine vanity is the appeal.
Women have not used their minds upon this matter. Some have reached a stage of social evolution which leaves the powder-puff to the baby-basket and the make-up box to the actress, whose profession demands it; some even have a sort of shrinking from a “painted lady" as if paint meant vice. It does not. It only means a low grade cultural standard.
Those same savages who so painfully and laboriously scarred their poor bodies from head to heel in the effort to be beautiful had no real standard of phvsical beauty to live up to. So our women, dressed in the most elaborate and expensive “creations," hung with beads and chains and shiny stones, powered white and painted pink, doing their utmost to achieve beauty, are quite unconscious of their own physical shortcomings, or serenely indifferent to them.
If half the effort spent on obtaining beautiful coverings were used to develop a beautiful body to cover, humanity would be lovelier.
There is room for all the richness, delicacy and grace our artistic ingenuity can create, for every lovely fabric, for varied attractiveness in robe and frock; and further for the most exquisite, the most splendid decoration, without committing one of the artistic sins, the savage coarseness, we see so often.
A highly cultivated discriminating taste does not disdain one of the manv forms of beauty; in woven fabrics, from the mistiest muslin to the heaviest brocade; in any kind of legitimate decoration or accessory. It admits each “motive"; delights in the art of the jeweler and the lace-maker; in splendor, in variety, but not in misplaced sexdecoration, in a perpetual childishness, or in a grossness of savagery which should have been outgrown thousands of years ago.
As one further instance of this most lamentable feature in woman's dress, we cannot omit their ghastly use of those two primitive materials—furs and feathers.
The exquisite beauty of both, and the added value of warmth, together with the lightness of the bird-covering, make them deservedly popular, both useful and lovely. But the way in which they are used, decoratively, by women, is neither useful nor lovely, but the extreme opposite.
Leaving out for the moment the need of fur garments, where lighter woolen ones would do; and not yet touching upon the ethical or economic questions involved, the point here urged is merely that of decoration.
A woman—a woman of our race, our religion, our standard of college education, our highest culture, thinks it beautiful to fasten on her hat the stuffed corpse of a bird—or many of them. I have seen a woman, charming, interested in settlement work, wearing a hat “decorated" by a close wreath of the stiff little bodies of dead humming birds. Within a few days I passed one, a simple black hat, upon whose front was clapped a flat dead dove; upon the back a second.
This is one degree different from the use of plumage; it adds to the color, the curve, the graceful softness of the feather, quite another matter—the rigid outline of a corpse. Ostrich plumes are lovely. An ostrich, dead, dried, and flattened, is not lovely. Neither is any bird. The beauty of the bird is in its vivid movements, swift and light; its poor carcass is not a decorative “motif" like a fleur-de-lis. Moreover, by so using the corpse, there is instantly brought to the mind of the beholder the painful images of death. They may be inferred from the feathers. They are forced upon us by the cadaver.
Not only in feathers do our women offend, but in fur. Besides the girl's sweet face grins over her shoulder the red jaws of an animal. bead-eyed, white-toothed. It is artificial, of course. It is deliberately made, sold, and worn—as an ornament. Such an object, if it be of a large beast, is terrible. If a small one, and those so used are small, it merely suggests the wholesale slaughter of helpless little creatures, and the most callous indifference to their pain. Their stiff little helpless feet hang down at one end; their grinning little heads, their limply wagging tails, and all this array of ghastliness, is worn as—decoration.
The head-hunters of Borneo hang their houses with the dried skulls of their victims. In ancient South America they kept them, shrunken and blackened, without the skull. But they did not manufacture dead things as ornaments.
(To be continued)