THE ART ASPECTS OF MODERN DRESS.


At a recent conversazione of the London Literary and Artistic Society,
Mr. Sellon read a paper upon this subject. Having expressed his belief
that mere considerations of health would never dethrone fashion, the
lecturer said he should endeavor to show on art principles how those who
were open to conviction could have all the variety Fashion promised,
together with far greater elegance than that goddess could bestow, while
health received the fullest attention. Two excellent societies, worthy
of encouragement up to a certain point, had been showing us the folly
and wickedness of fashionable dress--dress which deformed the body,
crippled the feet, confined the waist, exposed the chest, loaded the
limbs, and even enslaved the understanding. But these societies had been
more successful in pulling down than in building up, and blinded with
excess of zeal were hurrying us onward to a goal which might or might
not be the acme of sanitative dress, but was certainly the zero of
artistic excellence. The cause of this was not far to seek. We were
inventing a new science, that of dress, and were without rules to guide
us. So long as ladies had to choose between Paris fashions and those of
Piccadilly Hall, they would, he felt sure, choose the former. Let it be
shown that the substitute was both sanitary and beautiful, capable of an
infinite variety in color and in form--in colors and forms which never
violated art principle, and in which the wearer, and not some Paris
liner, could exercise her taste, and the day would have been gained.
This was the task he had set himself to formulate, and so doing he
should divide his subject in two--Color and Form.

In color it was desirable to distinguish carefully between the meaning
of shade, tint, and hue. It was amazing that a cultured nation like the