The Loss in Fashion

Have we hit upon the right idea of Fashion? The process which has been going on ever since the world began seems to have a defect in it. When you have got a woman thoroughly civilized and well fashioned you cannot do anything more with her. And it is worth reflection what we should do, what could we spend our energies on.

We do not like to admit that fashion process has its cycles, that fashion and women, like trees and fruit, grow, ripen, and then decay. The world has always had a conceit that the globe could be made entirely fashionable, and all over the home of a society constantly growing better. In order to accomplish this we have striven to eliminate bad taste in women and in nature:

Is there anything more unsatisfactory than a perfect color, perfect fabric, perfect texture, design and print brought into the most absolute harmony of taste and culture? What more can a woman do with it? What satisfaction has a woman in it if she really gets to the end of her power to improve it? There have been such nearly ideal situations, and how strong nature, always working against woman and in the interest of untamed wildness, likes to riot in them and reduce them to picturesque destruction! And what sweet sadness, pathos, romantic suggestion, the human mind finds in such a ruin! And a fashion that has attained its end in all possible culture, entire refinement in style, in tastes, in the art of elegant intellectual and luxurious living--is there nothing pathetic in that?

London is probably the most civilized centre the world has ever seen; there are gathered more of the elements of that which we reckon the best.