Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/138

100 feature of nearly every bodice, the only alternative being a double collar, which turned down at the neck.

The outstanding petticoat was ubiquitous, skirts over it being single and trimmed with flounces, or double and dividing in the centre, to show a contrasting under-skirt. Kerchiefs and capes were draped over low dresses, and berthas were important features in the tulle or tarletan gown, which was festooned and flounced, tied with ribbons, one skirt being looped up over another with more ingenuity than elegance.

The bonnet poked its brim into an audacious spoon, tilting upwards to reveal a trimming beneath of quillings and ruchings in muslin or net, with a bow of ribbon and a bunch of feathers on the crown, whence fell the curtain at the back to the neck. The poke gradually decreased in height and width, eventually assuming a semicircle as close to the brow as the bonnet of a barge-woman, and the French ladies adopted this fashion, making the bonnets of straw and draping them with a green gauze veil. About i860 the crinoline of horsehair and steels "swelled visibly," like another hero, and Leghorn hats took the place of bonnets. These, decked with ribbons and plumes, would bend low their brims over the face of beauty and ugliness.

Hair was permitted every license except the monstrous unhealthy misdemeanours of the Stuart and Tudor periods. In turn, it strained itself rigidly to the topmost point of the crown, where, coiled in plaits, it met the just reward of a disfiguring bunch of feathers; it puffed itself out in a mass behind the ears, or banded itself