Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1889 — GORGEOUS COSTUMES. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GORGEOUS COSTUMES.

HOW THE FASHIONABLE BRIDE OF TO-DAY IS ARRAYED. The Awful Ordeal of Getting Married—The Fashionably Arrayed Bride Calculated to Cause a Weak-Nerved Groom to Yell tor Help. JNF.W YORK CORRESPONDENCE. 1

FANCY there are hardly more than three rules which may be laid down .as imperative for a bridal costume. One is that the gown shall be white. The next is that arms and neck shall be

closely covered. The third is that a veil shall be worn. Orange blossoms obtain —to use the popular word—and have obtained since Eve, denied the fabric of a loom, wrought her, so says the legend, a gown of the orange blossom petals, and therewith charmed Adam afresh. Yet, Eve to the contrary even, a nineteenth century union is legal, and all that, though the blossoms be omitted or a substitute found. Simplicity should reign, but it doesn’t —Eve to the contrary, too. Instead of a trembling, shy bit of girlhood coming veiled and shrinking unto her eager groom, instead of a maid in simple

robes of virgin white shrouded closely in a jealous veil, a creature so wrapped in shrinking maidenhood that her bold lover feels a new impulse to care for and protect her forever—instead of this, the bride of to-day bears down upon her immaculately shirt-fronted lord, a shimmering billow of selfassertive satin. She is ciowned, not hidden, by a veil that surges all over and waterfalls everywhere, except over her face. Her arms are full of a big tree of orange blossoms tied with yards of ribbon. Thus, I say, she swoops upon him, and, so it has been confided to me, scares the life nearly out of him. Oh! it is all changed now. He is the shrinker, and no wonder. Isn’t a bride, arrayed in as formidable a lot of elegance as the young lady of my picture, enough to cause a weak-minded groom to yell for help ? How is he ever going to get all that to the altar? Probably when he “asked her,”‘she drooped and sighed, and was as sweet and dependent and shrinking as any lovely woman is liable to be under such circumstances; but now! a man might be excused for bolting right out of the back door of the church when he realizes he has got to run the risk of being swamped in his lady’s train before he and the train are one. Grooms, these days, are inclined to weak-mindedness. The entire situation is the woman’s. Isn’t conscious power written all over this bride’s dress? No matter how big and handsome a groom might be, he could not, as he knelt beside such a gown, look much more important than might a stick of licorice in an avalanche. Ivory ottoman silk; front • draped in rich embroidered lisse; sash tied at side with a bunch of orange blossoms, the ends caught with silver* oats; collar, cuffs and revers of bodice of same silver embroidery; a long court train with a ruche of Nil—think of getting married in all that! Think of a groom peeping through the vestry door and seeing a court train with a ruche of Nil shoveling his bride toward the altar! Even for the bride, I am told, getting married is an awful ordeal. While ithe responsibility, anguish, and *awk-

wariness of the private performance of asking is all his—the entire weight of the public performance of getting smoothly, gracefully, and elegantly married seems to rest upon us. He does his asking with no one to criticise him but us. He may be limp, knockkneed, and nervous —his hands may shake and his voice quake, but it must be confessed that we are inclined to make allowances. Besides, we can, if necessary, help him along if he gets so tangled that he stops. But at church every eye is on us. If he gets tangled you can’t do anything but whisper darkly that, if he doesn’t brace up, you won’t marry him at all, and that is as likely to reduce him to a condition of complete incompetency as it is to inspire him to go on. If here he sticks, it is disastrous. Oh ! the sense of double responsibility is awful for the bride. Then, too, comes the moment of your own panic. When book and priest are actually before you; when train and dress and people and lover even fade for the instant, and you oftly remember that you are about to sort of put your foot into it without quite knowing how deep it is —then you get the kind of panic w hich at the theater would be called stage fright. In one swift moment you see yourself scurrying adown the aisle and away and away—anywhere —and that imagined self you feel has the best of it. Then you wonder if you are saying

the answers right, and how Algernon is coining through, and during the choked pauses he makes you decide he isn’t coming through at all, and that you are glad of it. Getting married is, I am sure, as dreadful as what actresses call a “first night.” To go back to the bridal array presented by the wedding which is illustrated in this article. Matching the court-trained bride herself, the bridesmaids are most elaborate. They, too, are done up in ivory silk, but it is ivory silk relieved with green revers and sashes of moire. The bodices have a Directoire sort of ruching down the front, that the prevailing fashion may be deferred to. Their hats are turned up with green and trimmed with ivory. They carry each a great bunch of lilies of the valley tied alxnit with sash ribbon, and they wear besides gold chain bangles, gifts of the bridegroom. Fine, fine, fine, is it not—the great church, the blare of the organ, the crowds, the gorgeous dresses! It sets an old-fashioned body to remembering a dark little church whose stained windows are shadowed with ivy, a low, throbbing organ, a few closely gathered friends and neighbors, an old preacher whose hands baptized, a few years back, the girl that now stands to be married. She wears a white frock that drags a little at the back and buttons simply to the throat; over her face a veil that is held on her drooped head by a wreath of orange blossoms. A bunch of the same flowers she holds in her trembling hands beneath her veil. Some tears are dripping quietly under the veil, too. She is very happy and . very, very* much frightened, and for a moment wishes she were one of her simply gowmed bridesmaids, no one of whom, however, could be mistaken for her, for their' straight frocks are in some soft color and they carry bright flowers. The groom is nervous, too, of course, but, dear me, he does not look or feel a bit more like a piece of licorice than does his little bride like an avalanche. Old-fashioned folks, looking at pictures like the one given here, and reading of grand weddings like our portraiture, wonder alittle if the droop-

ing, half-crying little bride of thirty years back—but why draw comparisons ? It is all the same thing, whether done in satin and shine in a big fashionable cathedral with all “the world” to look at you and your dress, or in

meekness and muslin in a little village church, or in a hack and a hurry, with a bonnet, old gloves and a hastily secured license to add dignity to the ceremony—it’s all the same; and whether or not content and happiness go out of the church to follow the pair will—dear old chestnut that it is—of course depend not on the dress but the girl in the dress. It is a curious thing that brides so seldom look as well in their bridal gown as all their friends 4iave seen them look dozens of times. I suppose it is because bridal gowns are usually ugly and unbecoming. White silk or satin is bound to be trying when worn close up to the throat. Yet white satin seems to be the popular fabric. Of course you can hardly suit youi lover in your bridal dress. “ He is sure to recall to your mind some little blue serge or gray cashmere or pink gingham in which he caught you such a morning and in which yon looked lovelier to him than any fine dress—bridal gown included—has ever been able to make you look since. White velvet is softer looking than the satin, but it is heavy, especially if one be married in warm weather, or if one is a wee slight tiling. I think it would be a good idea if a set fashion were adopted as the proper thing for brides—just as the color has been settled upon. A Gretchen dress, for instance, with yoke softly gathered about the throat and made of lace or tulle—satin upper skirt drawn up through a silver or pearl chain to show an embroidered underskirt surely such a gown in its pretty simplicity would seem to suit better the service and the occasion than does the latest invention of a modiste and manufacturer. Old-fashionecl things have a charm. Love is very old-fashioned, and marriages, too. Will they not gather added sweetness if they be set as much as possible in the same simplicity worn before flirtation and divorce were so popular ? All of which is old-fashioned talk, is it not ? But somehow the sight of that train with its “ ruche of Nil ” and of that shrubbery of orange blossoms has made my soul rebel against the invasion of conventionality and fashion and stiffness and style upon this ceremony of marriage. Have a dress parade, if necessary, before or just after the wedding, but let us have the wedding stripped of the pride and pomp of faYiric and frills, say I; and every bridegroom of late weddings shouts with me, I know it I Daisy Dart, in Chicago Ledge').

Fashion Small Talk. Large hats have aureole brims. Princesse gowns are worn in the house. Scarfs are being made to match summer dresses. Accordion-plaited pelisses are worn by little girls. Open-dotted Chantilly is in favor for lace dresses. Metal still keeps a prominent place in ornaments and embroideries. White and gold parasols are shown to accompany dressy white toilets. Tufts and rosettes of the narrowest riblxm are much used on spring millinery. The principal spring wraps are the Directoire cape, the jacket, and the pelisse. Draped skirts now represent a long overskirt in many plaits, lifted on the left side only. Many new gowns have a featherstitched shirt-waist beneath a bodice fastened only at the waist. A popular wrap is called a yisitejacket, and is exactly what its name indicates, a compound of jacket and visite. Armure silks are still in fashion, particularly those which are figured on a surface that looks like repped satin de Lyon. Roses are the favorite flower for the table at ladies’ luncheons, and are placed in rose-bowls at different parts of the board. Ostrich plumes adorn hats in all the Directoire shapes, while those belonging to the Empire period are nearly covered with flowers. A new style of costume, fichu draperies, pointed corsage, and plaited skirt, covered in front with a fringed apron, is known as the Marie Antoinette dress.

A BRIDE AND A BRIDESMAID.

A LITTLE MAID OF HONOR.