Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/110

74 tciiture, being indispensable for the commodes, the frilled cravats, and the collars. It was useful alike to men and women, and beautiful specimens of lace were enriched with gold and silver under the auspices of Venice and Spain. Mazarin had, in endeavouring to stay the popular greed for lace, caused a small social revolution, and the French bought lace from England. Colbert was wiser in his generation, for he set up a factory at Alençon, and Brussels and Mechlin devoted themselves assiduously and most successfully to lace.

Amongst the vain efforts of an earlier period in France was one to kill fashion, whose reckless prodigality had been voted insupportable, and like to bring ruin to the people. A contemporary print shows the funeral of fashion, the design being of fashion led by four women and followed by a crowd of v^orkpeople, while a sarcophagus in the background bears the following epitaph:—

But Louis XIV. was so appreciative of the charms of costume that he would distribute all materials, silks and satins and brocades, to his courtiers, and exercise some jurisdiction over the way these were to be made. Painting on silk and satin was amongst the novelties of his reign, but embroidery still held the affections of the prodigal, and at a fete at Vaux, Mile, de la Valliere is recorded to have worn a gown of white with golden stars and leaves in Persian stitch, and a blue sash tied in a large knot upon her bosom, while her fair waving hair, entwined with flowers and pearls, fell