Page:Book of Etiquette, Volume 2, by Lilian Eichler.djvu/176

152 ruff of the Elizabethan period, and decreed dignified wigs for the gentlemen of the Colonial days. It decided upon the mantle of the patriarch, the toga of the Roman, the fez of the Turk. Its endless whims and vagaries made the study of dress one of the most curious and fascinating in the world.

How was Fashion created, you ask? To answer thoroughly, we must once more go back to those distant cave-man days when dress itself had its inception. At first one simple costume for both men and women distinguished each tribe. There was nothing different in the way the skins were thrown over the body, no embellishments to render any one costume different from those worn by the others. Even at a relatively late date, uniformity of dress among people of one race was like a national characteristic; it was worn by all.

But slowly, as the tiny beam of civilization struggled onward and upward, there came a desire for something more than merely a protection against cold and rain. There came a very intense desire for ornamentation and personal adornment. Thus we find men and women in Central Africa decorating their bodies with stripes of paint, and those who were still more "fashionable" deforming themselves with most weird series of cicatrices on their bodies and faces. In New Guinea we find women who do not indulge in clothing at all, ashamed to appear in public without bracelets on their arms and legs, and ornaments on their heads. So intense did this love of ornament grow among women, that they began to cover their bodies with fur, feathers, shell, beads and countless ornaments. As late as the year 400 the primitive desire for self-adornment is evident. In that year, it is recorded that the wife of the Emperor Honorius died, and when