"
"He didn't say it," replied the Woman of the World; "and besides it
isn't ugly. It's the very latest fashion."
"Why is it," asked the Philosopher, "that women are such slaves to
fashion? They think clothes, they talk clothes, they read clothes,
yet they have never understood clothes. The purpose of dress,
after the primary object of warmth has been secured, is to adorn,
to beautify the particular wearer. Yet not one woman in a thousand
stops to consider what colours will go best with her complexion,
what cut will best hide the defects or display the advantages of
her figure. If it be the fashion, she must wear it. And so we
have pale-faced girls looking ghastly in shades suitable to dairy-
maids, and dots waddling about in costumes fit and proper to six-
footers. It is as if crows insisted on wearing cockatoo's feathers
on their heads, and rabbits ran about with peacocks' tails fastened
behind them."
"And are not you men every bit as foolish?" retorted the Girton
Girl. "Sack coats come into fashion, and dumpy little men trot up
and down in them, looking like butter-tubs on legs. You go about
in July melting under frock-coats and chimney-pot hats, and because
it is the stylish thing to do, you all play tennis in still shirts
and stand-up collars, which is idiotic.
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