Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 162, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1911 — NEED CENSOR OF FASHIONS [ARTICLE]

NEED CENSOR OF FASHIONS

Writer Declare* All New Models Should Be Examined Before They Ara Given to Public. "Fashions are for fools,” said an eighteenth century writer, and. had he lived In the twentieth century he would have more reason than ever for his assertion. If the bulk of people were more original and independent fashion would have little influence. It It the sbeep-llke quality in human nature, the unthinking blind subservience to the “correct thing,” that causes so many women to become servile slaves to fashion, even to the extent of making caricatures of themselves at the behest of the most tyrannical of goddesses. Never before surely were fashions so inartistic as they are at present A state censor of dress is much needed; some one of unimpeachable taste, to whom every new fashion would be submitted before it was launched on the public. Such a state offlclal Is much more needed than a censor of plays.

Moreover, it would not be the first time that fashion had to bow to a higher decree than that qf milliners and modistes. In the middle of the fourteenth century at Bologna, Peseta and elsewhere, all dresses had to be submitted to the authorities and sealed with a leaden "bolla," and in Italy in 1240 the church prohibited the ladies of Lombardy from wearing long trains. Would that some such check could be put upon fashions nowadays! When we take our walks abroad we are compelled to submit to a succession of aesthetic shocks. Hats like huge inverted flower pots adorn every second head; but the agony of the artistic soul surely reaches its most acute stage when it encounters that monstrosity of modern times, the hobble skirt. Since its Introductjon all grace has disappeared from our midst. Some extreme styles are chic or elegant. The hobble skirt is neither the one nor the other. It is simply silly. It is good news, therefore, that this grotesque garment is doomed to extinction. Queen Mary of England has

expressed her strong disapproval by forbidding it to be worn at court functions during the coronation season. For this command on the part of Her Majesty all beauty loving people will be profoundly grateful.