The Hillsdale Standard

SOME ABSURDITIES OF FASHION.

A late traveller, in describing the Danube was struck with the crowd of new carriages on board the steamboat, and, on making inquiry, learned that they were destined for Bucharest. He was told that every Wallachian gentleman, able to keep a carriage at all, considered it indispensable to have a new one annually whether the old one was worn out or not; and that no carriage would answer, unless it was made at Vienna, and transported by steamboat, that being the costliest method of taking it to Bucharest.

We naturally laugh at the absurdity of such a fashion, and ask, with the traveler, why coaches made at Bucharest by manufacturers from Vienna, would not answer the purpose of the Wallachians. Yet are not we Americans, the far superior to the Wallachians generally in civilization, guilty of fashionably follies quite as ridiculous? Is not Paris to us what Vienna is to them? We have actually seen coaches from the French capital sold for prices far above their worth, simply because the purchaser imagined they must be better than American ones, though it is notorious to all familiar with manufacturers of this description, that no coach makers in the world equal our own, in the combined lightness and stability of their vehicles of all varieties.

So also in matters of dress. A French bonnet will sell for twenty-five dollars, when one made here, upon the same pattern, and with similar materials will not bring half that sum. French fashions are all the rage no matter how absurd. A few months ago Louis Napoleon re-established trains at court, and already our would-be aristocracy are wearing trains too. Frequently, in imitating Parisian styles, we exaggerate them, or apply them where they are entirely unsuitable, and thus out-Herod Herod. The lady of Louisville Kentucky, who appeared in the muddy streets there, the other day, wearing an enormous train, which a little black page supported, furnished an illustration of this. Instead of copying the court fashion she only caricatured it. The Empress Eugenie would no more think of wearing her court mantle in the street, than she would of going up and down the Boulevards, with her crown on her head, like the queen in the story-book.

Another frequent example of the absurd manner in which French fashions are applied here is in the wearing of carriage dresses or carriage bonnets for promenade or the going out a shopping in the morning, in rich silks and dinner costume. The attire of the Parisian lady is, at worst, suitable for the occasion: but American ladies copy indiscriminately their foreign models.

Though our whole social life may be seen similar absurd imitations of European customs makes us the laughing stock of intelligent Frenchmen. Our fashionable people act, sleep, and rise up, at hours suitable to an idle aristocracy, and not at those indispensable to men in active business, as most of the heads of rich and fashionable families are. Their amusements are those of ennuied drones, not those appropriate for overtasked merchants, manufacturers, or professional men. To dance half the night: to flirt with other men's wives: and to go the round of fashionable social follies generally, may answer for a class of hereditary nobles, whose chief object in life is to kill time but not for working republicans, who have no time for such child's play. Yet we continue to practice these modes of so-called recreation denominated parties, merely because they are of foreign origin, though actually they furnish no recreation at all to grown up men or women, but are, to speak plainly, positive bores. We might follow up the subject, and show that in scores of things, Americans are as absurd in their fashions as the Wallachians, who will not have a coach unless it is brought from Vienna by steamboat. While we laugh at others it is as well to look at ourselves, and see if there may not fairly be laughter raised at our expense also.--[Ledger.