Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1888 — THE TYRANT DRESSMAKER. [ARTICLE]

THE TYRANT DRESSMAKER.

A Woman's Wail Over the Methods and Work ol the Modistes of ToDay. The melancholy days have come, among the saddest of the year, when woman renews her ancient ttiuggle with the dressmaker. There are dressmakers, dressmakers cheap and dressmakers high, dressmakers fashionable and dresamakers unknown to fame and fortune, but they are ad bound together in one common Inability to get on smootnly with their patrons. Why should there be so much trouble over women's clothes? There is a subject for philotophical investigation! Is it in the clothes or the woman or the dressmakers that the difficulty lies? Probably in all three, It used to be thought that it was because women made the <1 reuses and were not good business people as a c'aee that the trouble came. But now we have given men dressmakers a pretty thorough trial without solving the difficulty. Undoubtedly there are thousands of incompetent women doing dressmaking as a stop gap, without any knowledge of tbeir bosinessor business pridejbutthere are also women dressmakers that are the equals of the beat men, but there are none ofjeither sex who can be depended upon. ;I saw net a week ago a gown made in London by the most famous English tailor that would have disgraced any twelve-dollar-a-suit women in New York. Who ever heard of a famous tailor giving a man a sc it at his highest price, that did not fit, and waa too short here, and to s wide tnere? Nobody. And for the best reasons that the man doesn’t live tnat under such circumstances would take it and pay for it. And there must be one main root of the difficulty. Women are easily bullied,—

Another doubtless is that, ss might be expected that being true, they are given to bullying where they can. Douotless the dressmaker could a tale unfold, whose lightest word makes them all resolve to t tie it out on the fixfet helpless customer that they dare to. There is stillahother thing that makes women’s clothes a fruitful source of sorrow, and that is their variety. Even tbe etherial kjgiercon descends to call attention to the fact that if you want a good dinner you’d better get the cook to prepare identically the same meal every day for a week ahead of the crucial date.

Given a few varieties of style and men’s clothes are all made alike. Only .the measurements will vary in a dozen suits. Almost every woman's new rig is an experiment. Yet we don’t want to change that. Even for'the sake of peace we can't desire to reduce women to the monotony of men, even if it were a less ugly monotony. / Undoubtedly the main trouble for women with their dressmakers comes from tne absence tof distinct business standards on their part. When the great London tailor made that atrocious spit for my iriend he presumed not only on her meekly patting up with it,ybat on the fact that if she didn’t other people would and that conjt quentiy he didrbtTftrawhat she did. He keep* up his reputation with notablfs 'and celebrities. For them he takes pains and inakes beautiful gowns and consequently and snobbishly /other women flock around him and take what they csri'get. Hr * That ij the usual method of the great dressmakers. Bat yon say there are numbers of well dratsad women, how do they come by their clothes? I can tell you—by fasting and prayer. Eternal vigilance is the price of good clothes. They alter things themselves after they are sent home, they buy new cloth and pay extra for corrections of absurd mistakes; they tike things from one dressmaker to another to get them fixed, they throat up one gown ai an utter failure and take a fresh start on another one. Sometimes they train up a dressmakerin the way she should go, through some special hold on her. Before Mrs. Potter became famous enough iif that is what yen call it) to have Wof.b and Felix competing for the privilege of making her gowns for nothing— whenjssbe was st It Mrs. James Brown Fotteron a small income in fashionable society, she, with that immense.jexecutive ability she unquestionably possesses, created her own dressmaker. She took a little, cheap, un* known 1 womans who showed some" taste,and she taught her and e uperintended and gave her all her work to do, so that the woman had every inducement to do the best she could, and assail the worid'knows, she did very well. I Mrs, Potter had, the advantage of knowing something about sewing herself. / That is because she is a Southern Woman. The Southern woman does not know as much about housekeeping is the Northern; she is very apt to know nothing of it, and to never have seen the inside of a cooking-school or to all intents and purposes of a kitchen; hut she generally doesknow how to sew; and and make her own clothes. Mrs. Potter's little woman was riot enterprising. She did not make that connection tothestoppingstonetofortune that she might. Once given a start there is no business in which merit

makes a more immediate and brilliant success than in dressmaking. It is not twelve years since a woman I know was just getting her first little work to dp tor good customers—a few well-known and beautiful women—and patiently going to their bouses ascot to fit them. Going to them was the inducement she offered to get their custom. It is now two years since she retired with a fortune, though her name ktU adorns her old business place. But this woman had the uncommon combination of business sen’s and arfi t’c ability. Forty dollars was her final price for any kind of a suit, or for an even ; ngor dinner dress. *>. She began by making servant girls’ gowm:—jhe was an Irish woman from the serving class—at four and five dollars. Forty co'lars is the usual price for making with any of the people of standing, and as soon as they became really swell they furnish their patrons with materials and refuse to make up any otherp. The good tailors make nothing for less than a hundred dollars. These are absurd prices. Before Amei leans had completely corrupted London a pound would pay for the making of a dress at a fashionable place. But Americans have a very creditable horror of badly paid work and there would be small complaintof dressmakers prices if the bast insured good work. As a matter of fact it is a chance if they do, and that chance it best if you can find an ambitious worker desiring to become fashionable and not yet arrived at that destination.