Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/529

* DRESS. 450 DRESS REFORM. clothed legs, even among the princes of the land. As for the kilted Highlanders, there is little doubt that the plaited petticoat worn as the one garment from the waist down is of very recent introduction. It is the successor of that part of the belted plaid which was arranged as a skirt, confined above by the belt and allowe<l to hang at a greater or less length, as required. One is reminded of the dress of Hindu and Javanese women — a large piece of stulT neither cut out nor sewed up, but simply adjusted around the body. Of this nature was the belted plaid — a woolen blanket held with brooches and a belt in any one of several dispositions. But at a time generally fixed as the sixteenth century it was divided, for military reasons : the plaid was made smaller and worn over the upper part of the Ijody. partly concealing the shirt, while the philibeg or skirt was put on separately. The change, however, made no difference in the nakedness of the thighs and lower part of the body, which remained under either condition covered only by a loose floating piece of woolen, while the legs below the knees were covered with stockings of ^me kind: perhaps always cut out of cloth and sewn up, as in modern Highland military- costume. With tliese exceptions, the progress of dress in Europe and the Europeanized lands in other con- tinents has been toward greater and still greater complexity. The attempt to leave the lower limbs of hard-working people in freedom has re- sulted in a series of experiments in knee-breeches, pantaloons, trousers, and the like: but in a way hard to explain the lower garments have grown generally less and less convenient and less and less comely. The human body lends itself verv- badly to dress, except that of the simplest robe held at the neck and draped at the waist. Every- thing else has to be adjusted to it with great care and constant changes and shiftings; and that the light and easily managed short breeches should have been superseded by the clumsiest of all garments, the modern trousers of stitT cloth, is inexplicable. On the other hand, the dress of women has been a constant hindrance to activity, and here again there is a disposition not to in- crease the ease of the body by diminishing the number and weight of complicated clothes, but to add to the difficulty and to the danger of modern apparel by separating women's garments at the waist, eompelling the body to carry a dragging weight of skirts, which our increasing fondness for warmth makes yearly heavier. The complete covering dress of women in its simplest form, as we see it in Italian works of art of the fifteenth century, although lending itself less to bodily activity than the dress of n.en, is far more ra- tional than men's dress in other respects; but the changing of fashions, and the determination of poor people to dress like those who are wealthy, interfere with an."thing like common sense in the matter except in rare instances. (See F.*.shiom.) Consult the authorities referred to under Cos- tume. DRESS'ER, Hexbt Ebles (1838—). An Kngli-li ornirholosist. He was born at Thirsk, Yorkshire, and, after studying in England, Ger- many, and Sweden, devoted himself to commer- cial pursuits, giving considerable time, however, to investigations in European ornithologj*, on which subject he is considered an authority. His most important work is .1 /7/'s/ori/ of the Birds of Europe. S vols., with colored plates (1871-81). Vol. VI.— 30. DRESSINGS. In architecture, a term loosely used to signiiy moldings and all the simpler kinds of sculptured decorations projecting from the wall surface, li is applied particularly to the accessories of doors and windows. DRESS REFORM. Dress reform, in the nar- row sense in which it is customary to use the term, signifies a more or less definite and con- certed movement against unhygienic, clothing for women which began about the middle of the nineteenth century. In the United States the earliest crusader against long skirts, high heels, a nuiltiplicily of bands, restricted breathing capacity, and other unhygienic forms of clothing was Amelia Bloomer. In 18.51 Sirs. Bloomer, as editor of The Lily, a paper advocating equal suffrage rights for men and women, gave some space to the discussion of a comfortable and sensible dress for women. In her case this dress took the form of full Syrian or Turkish trousers ex- tending to the ankle in summer, and in winter tucked into high boot-tops, worn with a scant skirt coming just below the knees. The credit of originating this costume, although it has always been known by her name, Mrs. Bloomer ir. her writings expressly gives to Mrs. Elizabeth Smith Miller, from whom she says she copied it, as did Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mrs. Lucy Stone (Blackwell), another of the pioneer American women suffragists, also adopted it for a time. But all of these ladies eventually re- turned to a dress more closely resembling the generally accepted one of their day. As early as 18.57 a Xational Dress Association Aas engaged in trying to spread hygienic ideals of dress among the women of the United States, but their efforts seem to have been abortive at that time. In England the Rational Dress Movement, as it was called, began in the seventies. It grew about equally from two roots — the pre-Raphaelite oestheticism, which flourished at that time, and a zeal for woven woolen clothing, which, sweep- ing over Germany, spread to England. The pre- Raphaelites advocated, as an artistic need, a return to the simple lines and the color combina- tions which they declared had not been found in English costumes since the middle of the four- teenth century. The "antique' waist — untram- meled and large — was taught by them to l)e more beautiful as well as more healthful than the tapering, hour-glass waist. In spite of the clever ridicule spent upon them as apostles of a ■greenery yallery' cult, they really accomplished something for the cause of dress reform. The 'woolen' crusade of the same period, basing its arguments upon pathological rather than aesthetic grounds, also bore excellent fruit in warmer, more closely fitting, less cumbersome underclothing. In 1874 a second National Dress Association was formed in Boston. Lectures were given by prominent physicians in which were attacked the chief evils of women's dress — namely, the corset, displacing the internal organs and interfering with the primal and most necessary function of life, breathing; the carrying of a weiirht of cloth upon the hips, resulting in further abdomi- nal displacements : the long skirt impeding loco- motion and harboring disease germs; the capri- cious and uneven nature of the protection against cold; the high heels and pointed toes of shoes,