1870s Books

“Change in fashion is simply the expression of an awakened intellect, groping in small things as in great for something better than it has known; and the use for a manual of fashion, such as we offer is, not to dictate to women any rule which they must blindly follow, but to afford such knowledge of varying costumes, and the manner of making them, that each may clothe herself appropriately, according to her appearance of age, or even mood.
Why should not a woman's purity of mind, her quick eye for color, her aesthetic sense of fitness, be disclosed in her attire as well as in the pictures on her walls or her garden? Very few of us will ever carve a great statue, or paint a great picture but we all have clothes to wear; and it is a duty we owe to ourselves and those around us, to so drape the bodies that God has given us, as to make no discord in this beautiful, pleasant world.
All of us have friends, or, it may be, children, with whom we would have a fair and tender memory. Carelessness and bad taste in dress, so far from being indicative of strength of mind, argues a certain vulgarity of feeling, just as vanity and foppery, on the other hand, prove a weak brain.
Wise men or women make their dress so thoroughly in accordance with their person and character, that nobody notices it any more than the frame of a picture; but to be clothed shabbily, in the hopes that our inner perfections will overshadow our dress, is but the extreme of vanity.
Peterson's Magazine, June 1873”
― Peterson's Magazine