The Loss in Fashion

Have we hit upon the right concept of Fashion? The process which has been going on ever since the world began seems to have defect in it. When you have got a woman thoroughly cultured and well fashioned you cannot do anything more with her. And it is worth reflection what we should do, what could we use our energies on.
We do not like to believe that fashion process has its cycles, that fashion and women, like trees and fruit, grow, ripen, and then decay. The world has always had a conceit that the globe could be made entirely fashionable, and all over the home of a society constantly growing better. In order to accomplish this we have striven to eliminate rotten taste in women and in nature:

Is there anything more unsatisfactory than a perfect color, perfect fabric, perfect texture, design and print brought into the most absolute harmony of taste and culture? What more can a lady do with it? What satisfaction has a woman in it if she really gets to the end of her power to improve it? There have been such nearly ideal situations, and how strong nature, always working against woman and in the interest of untamed wildness, likes to riot in them and reduce them to picturesque destruction! And what sweet sadness, pathos, romantic suggestion, the human mind finds in such a ruin! And a fashion that has attained its end in all possible culture, entire refinement in style, in tastes, in the art of elegant intellectual and luxurious living--is there nothing pathetic in that?

London is probably the most cultured centre the world has ever seen; there are gathered more of the elements of that which we reckon the best. Where in history, unless someone puts in a claim for the French Lady, shall we find a woman so nearly approaching the standard we have set up of culture as the English Lady, refined by inheritance and tradition, educated almost beyond the disturbance of enthusiasm, and cultivated beyond the chance of surprise? We are speaking of the highest type in manner, information, training, fashion, style in the acquisition of what the world has to give. Could these ladies have conquered the world? Is it possible that our highest civilization has lost something of the rough and admirable element that we admire in the heroes of Homer and of Elizabeth? What is this London, the most civilized city ever known? Why, a considerable part of its population is more unfashionable, more hopelessly unstylish, than any wild race we know, because they are the refuse and slag of the civilization, if we dare say that. We can do something with a degraded race of bad fashion, if it has any stamina in it. What can be done with those who are described as East-Londoners?

Every great city has enough of the same element. Is this an accident, or is it a necessity of the refinement that we insist on calling fashion? We are always sending out experts, models to savage or perverted nations, we are always sending out emigrants to capture and reduce to order neglected territory. This is our main business. How would it be if this business were really Over, and there were no more nations to teach our way of style to, and no more territory to bring under productive cultivation? Without the necessity of putting forth this energy, a survival of the original force in man, how long would our fashion last? In a word, if the world were actually all civilized, would not it be too weak even to ripen? We have a gay confidence that we can do something for Africa. Can we reform London and Paris and New York, which our own hands have made?

If we cannot, where is the problem? Is this a hopeless world? Must it always go on by spurts and relapses, alternate fashion and bad fashion, and the bad fashion being necessary to keep us employed and growing? Or is there some mistake about our ideal of fashion? Does our process too much eliminate the rough vigor, courage, stamina of the race? After some time do we just live, or try to live?

These questions are too complicated for these pages. Let us make the world pleasant, and throw a cover over the refuse. We are doing very well, on the whole, considering what we are and the materials we have to work on. And we must not make the world so perfectly civilized that the people,two or three centuries ahead, will have nothing to do.

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Misha Ghosh www.mishcollection.com

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