The Fin-de-siècle Bow: 1896

Rhinestone bows ball gown, Jean Philippe Worth, 1903 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/159175?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&deptids=62%7c8&ft=house+of+worth&offset=60&rpp=20&pos=71

It Flaunts From the Bonnet and Adorns the Lapdog.

THE NEW MARLBOROUGH KNOT.

The Bow and the Bloomer Not Harmonious—A Knot That Means Death to the Big Sleeve.

The bow is fashion’s fad. It has burst into bloom everywhere. It is omnipresent. The old, the young, the rich, the poor, every class and condition of femininity has yielded to its magnetic influence and it has become fashion’s crest for 1895. How long it will reign in the feminine heart remains to be seen. Time only can prove that. Gentle woman has cast her own fair form before its shrine and her lingerie, her hosiery, her garters, her shoes, her gowns, her millinery, her neckwear, her fans, flowers, bon bons, her muff, her parasol, every accessory within and every accessory without–everything seen and everything unseen–all, all are decorated with this recent fad of fashion and the power behind fashion’s throne dares not predict where it may end.

Gentle woman has had other fads. She embroidered her gowns with sunflowers and cat tails at one time and in her hand she carried sunflowers and cat tails; later she worshipped at the shrine of the rose, and still more recently she smiled with favor upon the violet. She bowed before Napoleon and Trilby, but her subjection has never in any instance—no, not in all instances put together—been as complete in its nature as in this reign of the bow.

She has gathered the bow from the bric-a-brac and from the piano legs and tied it about her own anatomy—her neck, her knees, her elbows, her waist; she has perched it upon her shoulders and upon her head, and she has encouraged it in every locality to flaunt and obtrude and intrude and protrude, and in all fabrics, and all hues and combinations of hues, solitary and in flocks. It has fluttered; or it has taken root and simply grown and blossomed, and we submit; we are even reconciled. It is absolute femininity; it is in contrast to the new woman and her bloomers. The bow is stationed at the dividing line of sentiment, and while the fin-de-siècle woman bombards our intelligence with her ideas about advancement there is another kind of woman who sews true, old-time feminine sentiment into bows, and with the latter the she bombards the camp of the enemy.

It is impossible to state whether the bow belongs to us on account of its credentials handed down from the period of the empire; whether its popularity is of Japanese origin, or whether it is simply the result of evolution and a final reaction from the English mode that has been in favor for several years. It is with millinery perhaps that the bow takes the greatest liberties. This winter my lady’s bonnet may be simply a bow, and be-spangled or not, just as she likes. It may be built on a wire foundation worn at the front of her head or at the back, and with an aigrette or a jeweled hat pin to stand sponsors for its claim to being a bonnet. It may dart out in front, or flare at the sides, windmill fashion; it may flare at the side of the hat like a great wing, or it may settle over the hat like a pair of wings. It may be as conspicuous as a weather vane or it may nestle back of a bird whose pinions are spread; it may flare at the back of the hat like a bat shaped bulletin, or it may spread its loops to the four points of the compass. It may be even tied in “a true lover’s knot under the chin.” The Priscilla-like maiden is not now much in evidence. The winter-of-’95 maiden is nothing if not smart in her get-up. One of the most striking features in the Vanderbilt trousseau was a Virot bonnet with nodding plumes and wide strings of French flowered ribbon tied under the chin in this same lover’s knot.

The Marlborough bow, now worn at the back of the neck, is named in honor of this new American duchess. Every dark gown must be lighted up by the Marlborough bow and in most daring colors, too, is this startling neck adornment perpetrated. Deep crimson, magenta, rose pink, apple green, yellow, and all flowered, striped brocaded, and combined with every tint in silk, satin or velvet stripes. It is seen in whatever design in four-inch ribbon the manufacturer can produce. Nothing is too gorgeous for the season’s belle or debutante to utilize in the Marlborough collar and bow. She pins the broad ribbon to place in front, and then winds it about her throat and thoroughly effective is the result produced by the startling and assertive bow she ties at the back of her neck. About the folds of this bow cluster little curls of fluffy hair and the shades in the ribbon blend into her fair pink skin. Woe to her, indeed, when the colors do not harmonize with her complexion and repeat their prevailing tone in her eyes!

The bow does not flock as much as it did. On last season’s gown it spread itself like a cluster of butterflies about the dress skirt. It now confines itself more to unexpected places, and it perches where you are not looking for it. At a bridesmaid’s dinner given last week in New York one of the most fetching toilettes was made of lavender crepon, and on one shoulder rose in perpendicular lines the loops and ends of an assertive bow made of watermelon-pink velvet. The fan carried by the same person wore also the same sort of a bow.

The Louis XIV. bow is absolutely the latest, and, by the way, it is this bow that is to liberate us from the thraldom of the huge sleeve. Already that feature in attire is beginning to lower its flag of supremacy. The sleeve begins to droop, its shirring is now falling down around the curve of the shoulder; later it will enjoy its final inflation in the huge puff at the elbow and last the bow on the elbow, as illustrated here, will supersede it. This will be some time hence, but it will come. Who could have predicted four years ago the sleeve as we now behold it?

The florist and the confectioner estimate the value of the bow to enhance the attractiveness of their goods. Even the modern modish funeral does not escape, and a large bunch of white chrysanthemums may be tied with six-inch white satin ribbon and hung on to the middle handle of the casket.

However important are all these conspicuous bows, the true sentiment of the bow never penetrated deeply into the feminine-heart until fair woman applied it to the decoration of her underwear. Every week after she has trimmed her freshly laundered underwear she is as attractive as lace, dimity, dainty ribbon and the half-hidden curves in all their classic outline can make her.  While the bow adorns her underwear, it will stem the tide that tends toward bloomers. My lady ties her robe de nuit with ribbon bows at the neck and wrists and ties a blossom in with the loops. She sews loops of ribbon in among the flounces of her petticoats; she adorns her garters with huge sachet rosettes of ribbon. She runs a tiny ribbon about the neck of her chemise and she perks bows at the shoulders of that same garment. She loops up her nether garments in festoons with bows that duplicate those on the shoulders and she ties her petticoats and her corset covers to place in the same fascinating manner. ‘Tis safe to assert that while she chooses to wield the sceptre of a ribbon bow, as she does now, the world will continue to submit to feminine rule.

HARYOT HOLT CAHOON.

Star Tribune [Minneapolis MN] 24 November 1895: p. 22

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Most interesting. Mrs Daffodil had no notion that bows would stem the riding tide of bloomerism.  Bloomers, whether on or off the wheel, have always been suspect to certain upright members of society.  In 1891, the Rt. Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York, condemned women bicycle-riders, tactlessly stating that they resembled witches on broomsticks. He also objected to what he believed to be the indecorous posture of ladies on the wheel.

Speaking of Bishop Coxe’s objection to women on bicycles, the Boston Herald says: “The Bishop does not appear to understand that the bicycle is not equipped with a side saddle, and that riding astride is the only way to promulgate this interesting vehicle.” We ought not to be surprised, perhaps, if the Boston woman rides astride [or man-fashion as it was called]  a bicycle, but if so she is lonely among her sex in that accomplishment. The women’s bicycles we have seen are provided simply with a seat, and they are no more required to ride astride than sit astride on an ordinary chair. If the good Bishop thinks that women straddle a bicycle as men do theirs he should request some fair Buffalonian to explain to him the difference. Rochester Herald. The Gogebic Advocate [Ironwood, MI] 11 July 1891: p. 2

What the Right Reverend Arthur Cleveland Coxe failed to understand is that there is no surer way to arouse public interest in the novel or indecorous than to denounce it from the pulpit. Bows and Bishops will never ban the bloomer or the bicycle.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

The Button Girl: 1896

Her rainy-day suit trimmed with buttons.

 THE BUTTON GIRL

Craze Has Struck Town with “Let’s Get Married” for a Record.

TEN TO ONE OF IT SOLD

Girl Who Wears 500 and Weighs as Much as a Museum Woman.

The button fad has struck the town at a gait that Trilby’s shoes might envy. Were that woman more youthful she would add a sabre to her military coat and go out and fight for her laurels upon the field of fadism.

The button girl has sprung up, like the button, in a day, and instead of being decorated with flags and campaign ensigns, she is wearing buttons! If the button-makers have been wise enough to have a political sentiment engraved upon the little pearl colored ensign, well and good! You may read “I’m a silver man; papa’s for tin,” as you ride down; in the cars of a morning. And if the local button-maker has made a certain stamp of button you may see “Gold’s good enough for me” under the ripe chin of a pretty miss on her way to a political meeting. But the buttons mostly are non-sectarian, as an old lady remarked as she read the Inscriptions upon the buttons of her granddaughter’s button collection. “There’s everything from ‘Put a penny in the plate’ to ‘Sunday-school’s out.'”

The True Button Girl.

There is one style of the button girl, the girl who loves buttons. She takes up the craze less as a fad than as a real fancy. She likes to own the buttons and caresses them as she would cancelled stamps or worn-out coins. They are so pretty, she thinks.

This style of young: woman is the one who carries on her conversation by buttons. They save breath and are so realistic. Like an Illustrated song!

To a caller dropping in for lunch she can say: “Ginger-snaps, fresh to-day.” And to the guest at parting she can point to a button that will remark: “Stay longer next time.” And when looking in her own mirror a minute later she can point to a reflective button, “Glad she’s gone.” This is for the girl who loves her buttons and finds company in them. They meet any and all occasions.

A gentleman entering a dry goods shop went to the notion counter for some trifle. Behind it stood a pretty girl. Her breastpin was a button, “Meet me Sunday.” And for cuff buttons she had: “Will you go treat?” and “I don’t know the way home.” These rather embarrassed the gentleman, but when the girl turned around he read: “Now’s your time.” And when she flashed her head around, her neck ribbon was fastened at the side with “Caramels, please,” and “Soda, five cents.”

This settled the gentleman. He walked out without the spool of thread and went home to tell his wife, only to learn that the button fad had struck the town and he had encountered the first installment of it.

Dressed in Buttons.

There are decorative buttons that trim a gown. These are purchased by the hundred at so many for a cent. They are for the girl who wears a great many buttons–in fact, dresses in them.

One of these maidens came down town on a rainy day, with her rainy-day suit a sight in buttons. There were buttons around the foot of her skirt. Buttons around the yoke of her waist. Buttons around her belt. Buttons upon her vest, two pyramids of them. Some were blue, others white, and others as black as the mud underfoot.

The pyramids upon the vest were the most interesting. At the top you read: “A policeman will take me home.”’ Below you saw: “Bloomers under this skirt,” and by the side of this interesting announcement, “My feet are wet” and “One of my legs is really longer than the other.”

As the pyramid grew in proportions the announcements became still more entertaining. The bottom row said: “Does your umbrella leak?” “Make room for me.” “Home’s the best place.” “Wish I didn’t work.” “Don’t you hate rain?”

The lower pyramid went on in the same diverting strain until you gladly read as the bottom button: “Guess I’ll get out here.”

“This is my corner,” was the announcement on her hat.

The feature of the button fad is its personality. Like Li Hung Chang, [Chinese politician and diplomat, who toured Europe and North America] the button is privileged to ask almost any question without rebuke. The simple, “Do you own your bike?” is passed by unnoticed. And “Don’t puncture your tire” is taken in the spirit in which it is sent–that of general advice. The button has its mission as well as its peculiarity.

The largest number of buttons that could be worn was determined by the girl who piled 500 upon her dress. She was the one who clothed herself, so to speak, in buttons. Her only other adornment being a simple black dress. The buttons did the rest. Each button weighed a large fraction of an ounce, so her weight was increased many pounds avoirdupois.

Modest Buttons.

Many girls who will not wear buttons openly slip them under the lapels of their jackets, and when you pass them the wind will take the lapel and flip it forward and you will read: “Meet me at the Bargain Counter.” Under the other lapel you will catch “Stop Winking at Me.”

“Take Off Your Hat,” “Here Comes a Lady,” are twin buttons standing side by side where you can see them, as the obliging lapel stays back. And hidden almost in its depths is the modest declaration, “No Man Ever Kissed Me.” This is the button craze as exemplified by the retiring girl who would not for the world wear her buttons outside. Too much like wearing her heart upon her sleeve!

Charming little buttons come, for underwear. Girls know all about these buttons. Get some girl with a pronounced attack of the button fad to tell you. She wears buttons on her underwear, you can be sure. Without being vulgar and without violating the proprieties you may know that one of them says “This is a bicycle corset,” and another declares “Ribbons on everything.” “I like violet best” is a statement you see peeping out of the neck of a morning gown, and if the gown be a folded one in front you may catch a gleam of “Here’s my heart.” “I’m the youngest of the family” is another confidential remark told by a sly button.

The button fad is not to be condemned, for it entertains, and that is more than can be said of most fads. It is a useful one, too, for the buttons are pins, and what would we do without pins? Men wear these pins under their, coat lapels and outside. And they lodge them in their cravats and even decorate their trousers bands with them. “I’m a Samson” holds up the trousers band of a young Yale wrestler, and “I’m Sandow’s Cousin” [Eugen Sandow, a German athlete and strongman] trimmed a sweater in which a Harvard oar’s football man rested.

“Tell Your Troubles to a Policeman” keeps many a bicycle cap in shape. And now you see “This Lady’s My Sister.”

“I Want a Match” is worn by girls, and “Please Help Me Mount” is another legend of the fair one.

The Button Business.

The button fad enriches many a manufacturer, for there are 500 button businesses in the United States and this means many a factory. The materials are cheap, but the workmanship is complicated. Every button passes through ten pairs of hands before it can come to you marked “I’m All Right;” and “Go to L” is sadly marred and disfigured if you get it before the polish has been put on. The Chimmy Fadden [a “Bowery boy” character, from the Chimmy Fadden stories by journalist Edward W. Townsend.] button is a popular one. One dear old lady wore “What t’ell” for some weeks, upon her cap strings before she knew what it meant. “I thought it was the old-fashioned ‘What tell?’” said she, blushing for the first time in fifty years, when the literal translation was laid before her. “And the little button was so becoming to the strings,” she said regretfully, as her grandson put it on and went out.

“Let’s get married,” is the button that wears the medal record as the world’s record breaker. And next to this comes “Let’s kiss.”

“Let’s get married” sells 10 to 1.

There is no lesson to be learned from this. But the trend of popular admiration can be noticed from it. The boys in the street sell “You’re my pretty girl” three to one of almost any other, and nine girls out of ten purchase “Love me, love my dog,” instead of “The Church Bell is ringing.” Truly love has always been the maiden’s as well as the poet’s theme.

A button box with the new girl does not mean the amiable old cracker box, willed to her from her grandmother, in which she keeps a miscellaneous assortment of buttons for yawning places. It means a nice little cabinet for buttons with a legend upon them. And the time-honored penny box means the money she is saving to buy more buttons.

Lincoln [NE] Evening Call 1 November 1896: p. 5

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil is quite fond of topical fads of this sort, which have their wild hey-day, only to be relegated to the dust-bin of History in a few months’ time. How many of these buttons survive, either in the historian’s notes or in a glass case in a museum?

We do find a few remnants of the fad: hikers and Volksmarchers assiduously collect buttons to show where they have been. The young lady, who trimmed her “rainy-day” suit with buttons would have found herself in congenial company with London’s Pearly Kings and Queens, who still reign in button-clad splendour to-day.

To be Relentlessly Informative, the “Trilby shoe” was a model with a very pointed toe named for the wildly popular novel by George du Maurier. Trilby has “the handsomest foot in all Paris.”

The Trilby Shoe, 1895, https://thecontentreader.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-classic-club-february-meme.html

McClure & Eggert, the enterprising firm of Shoe Manufacturers of our city, have just gotten out a Trilby Shoe in button and lace. It is a beauty, made on a new needle-toe last. Paris vamp, nice long tip; made out of a fine kid. The Buffalo [NY] Commercial 23 February 1895: p. 5

Mrs Daffodil is struck by how many of the button slogans are either highly indiscreet or could be read as double-entendres. “I want a match” might mean that the naughty young creature smokes or that she is unabashedly in the marriage market. Sly, indeed, although Mrs Daffodil suggests that “cheeky” is the mot juste. 

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

A Violet Luncheon: 1891

Carved amethyst violet brooch http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/23504/lot/239/?category=list&length=10&page=25

A VIOLET LUNCHEON

The Latest Fashionable Fad for Giving Floral Dinners

A Pretty Whim That is Proving Popular

Some Suggestions that will Doubtless Be of Use to Entertainers.

New York, Jan. 8. The holidays are well past and all the busy social world has turned its attention to dinners and luncheons, to balls and to germans. As surely as each season succeeds the last, as surely as society exists, so surely will each winter bring its own fashions and its own ways of doing the things which have been and which will be so so long as youth exists and the gay world goes on.

This season’s special fad is the giving of floral dinners and luncheons; not that there is anything either new or fresh in the use of flowers or in the giving of dinners, but in the exclusive use of one flower. Not long ago the correct luncheon was designated by one particular color which was seen in cloth, in flowers, in china, and even in the ices, but that is past and gone. To-day we hear not of yellow luncheons and of pink dinners, but of rose dinners and violet luncheons. Truth is that fashion must have change and often it happens that that change is not for the better, but in this instance the crown must be given to the later fancy, for none can deny that a rose dinner has more of poetry and more of beauty than one of pink can ever attain. So it is that to new ’91 must be given a high place in honor of the good taste and good judgment he has shown.

The floral dinner, or luncheon, as the case may be, is a notably good thing for many reasons—it allows of an exquisite decoration, and it prevents that most ruinous mixture of tints, which is all too often seen.

The requirements for a violet luncheon are not many, nor need they be costly, but they must be dainty and elegant and thoroughly harmonious. The cloth should be of fine, perfectly laundered linen damask, the china creamy white with decoration in gold, and all the color should be concentrate din the centre cloth and in the lovely blossoms themselves.

A Violet Luncheon table runner

The centre cloth should be oblong, of length and width sufficient to cover well the centre of the table. Its material should be fine Japanese linen lined with violet silk and its decoration violets worked in silks of Asiatic dye. The cloth should have on all four sides a hem-stitched hem and the flowers should be scattered over the centre. They will be not only handsomest, but most durable, if embroidered, but as the work is tedious, some busy women may prefer a quicker method. To them be it said that if each flower be painted flat in wash dye paint and then outlined with embroidery silk, the effect will be good, and, where time is an item, the method is desirable. The design shows a section of the cloth.

The light for the violet table should be that of candles, and the candles should be set in beds of violets. To accomplish this last result some little knowledge is required, but no skill beyond a dainty woman’s reach. A circular shallow pasteboard box should be provided for each cover; in the centre of this should be made fast a candle socket. The entire box should then be filled with freshest violets, with the candle rising form their midst. The shades should be in butterfly form, as the illustration shows.

A Violet Luncheon butterfly light shade

The making and setting of the candle shades can be accomplished with but a small amount of work if care be exercised to use just the right materials. To support the butterfly a bit of white wire must be secured to the bottom of the box and must be cut a little shorter than the candle. The shade itself must be cut from drawing paper, then painted and lastly lined with mica or isinglass. When the butterfly is complete it must be attached to the wire by which means it will be kept fast, yet allowed to sway a little. The lining of mica removes all anxiety on the score of fire, as it is absolutely non-combustible. The effect of the candles set in beds of flowers and shaded with butterflies is more beautiful than it is easy to realise without seeing them. The lovely modest flower which everyone loves makes the most beautiful candlestick possible, and the butterfly shades are so delicate and so perfectly in harmony as to make it difficult to imagine any others in their place.

A Violet Luncheon menu card

The final bit of decoration is the menu card, which is indeed a rarely lovely one. It is made from celluloid, and has a strip cut in it through which a bunch of violets is passed. On the strip is painted in gold lettering some apt quotations, and below is written or printed the menu. The completed card is a bit of real beauty, besides giving to each lady a bunch of the favored flower and a graceful memento of the occasion. The illustration shows the arrangement of the flowers.

There remains, now that the cloth, the china, the lights and the cards have been considered, only the edible portion of the feast upon which to expend a share of time and thought. It would be worse than poor taste to make suggestion to the lavish Southerner or Missourian as to the viands meant to grace her table. The hospitality and the perfection of cookery for which these ladies are renowned would make such suggestions intrusive, but even to the wise a word may be whispered, and so a few hints are ventured.

For bonbons, let candied violets be served and let them stand in dainty dishes at intervals over the table, that guests may help themselves at will. Let the menu be not too long and let the dishes be delicate as well as toothsome. Let the viands be such as are fit to approach the lovely violets, and let each course in its turn be as perfect in its way as the flowers are in theirs. In other words, avoid hearty roasts and elaborate dishes, for if the luncheon of to-day has one great fault, it is its too close resemblance to a dinner. If the fashion of the day were to be attacked at all, it would be on the score of the hearty luncheons, and if a word of advice dare be offered it would take the form of advocating simple viands and luncheons, which shall at least approach to being what their name implies. G.L. B.

St Louis [MO] Republic 11 January 1891: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It seems as though the Violet Luncheon hostess would spend so much of her time painting or embroidering cloths, cutting butterfly shades, and lettering menu cards that she would have no time to even consider the refreshments, merely snatching whatever came to hand from the pantry shelves.

To be perfectly frank, Mrs Daffodil considers the advice to avoid lavish dishes for luncheon superfluous. In her experience, luncheons for ladies rarely err on the side of abundance: a scrap of lettuce, some artistically arranged cottage-cheese, and a cup of lemon squash masquerading as an adequate repast.  Invariably, after thanking their hostess for a charming entertainment, and having emptied all the dainty dishes of bonbons in desperation, those in attendance would make a rush for the local pub where they might restore their fainting tissues with a “plow-man’s lunch.”  This, no doubt, saves expense for the hostess, but engenders resentment in her friends, and, if bridge is to follow, creates conflict and irritability where harmony ought to prevail.  One cannot expect players to be able to concentrate on their bidding on only a few candied violets.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

All About Lorgnettes: 1886-7, 1923

Guilloche enamel and diamond lorgnette c. 1910 http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22468/lot/64/

ALL ABOUT LORGNETTES

Their use Enables a Lady to Display Her Bracelets and Shapely Arm.

Merely a Graceful Affectation Quite as Often Intended for Ornament as Use.

Opera Glasses in Rich and Beautiful Designs

Celebrated Makers and Their Productions.

TWO LOVELY BLACK EYES

An opera without a pair of glasses is like pudding without sauce, salad without dressing, or a marriage without a wedding. Even the baldies in the first three rows enjoy the ballet and premiers better when fortified with a Lemaire or Verdi, and the lovers of music get double pleasure running over the audience between the acts with a seventeen line lens. A society woman would no more think of attending a play or opera without a pair of glasses than of dispensing with her fan or gloves. She may not use it much, but must have it to toy with if nothing more, for it helps her to display her suede and bracelets and is a decided aid to grace, as the bouquet may be wet enough to soil the gloves and the fan too frail for convenience. Let her forget the pretty pearl bound pebbles, and she would call the gentleman in her party “monster!” and cut him dead the next day if he neglected to hire a pair from the opera-glass boy.

Faberge lorgnette, c. 1910 http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/russian-art-n08844/lot.377.html

There is nothing newer than the lorgnette which has been the rage among fashionable ladies for a couple of years. As the cut shows, the lorgnette is nothing more than a pair of spectacles attached to a handsomely carved stick. It is a mistaken idea to think that the lorgnette is intended as a n opera-glass, properly focused and polished for long distances. It is merely a graceful affectation, quite as often intended for ornament as use. Ladies like them because they are a pretty and pleasing oddity, designed to exhibit a beautiful hand, a well-turned wrist, or nicely-modeled arm. Ladies who have old or weak eyes often select the lorgnette as a dress-spectacle, suspending them from a chatelaine and using them at church, over hymnal or litany, while calling, shopping, or promenading, to read the casual card, sign or address, and to make change with, in which case the glass is fitted to the eye by an oculist and framed in shell or metal by the jeweler.

Among the fashionables the fad is simply a foil to the eye-glass solitaire, and considered very English, don’t you know? For this stylish use the holes are set with clear white glass that has no more magnifying influence than a window-pane. These harmless pebbles are found in all styles of sticks. Tortoise is the most popular and varies in price from $12 to $20, according to the amount of work on the shell; gold-mounted lorgnettes in the Roman metal range from $40 to $60, and the silver sticks, in repousse, are worth $60, while double that figure is charged for enamelling. There is no mistake about it, these lorgnettes are “sweet things.” Put in the hand of a pretty woman at an opera or an art gallery the looker on is lost in admiration, and sees nothing but the artful creature—her dainty arms, upturned eyes, graceful throat, and charmingly posed head. One look from these long-handled glasses will wither a saucy clerk, a presumptuous dude, or an insolent servant. You can argue with them; flirt, play, read or paint with them; laugh or sing with them,, and be doubly gracious, charming, and effective.

There are widows and belles in society who wear the lorgnette without any glasses, and succeed in doing double the mischief they could otherwise accomplish. It may interest some of the sleepy dames on the West Side and up along the Evanston shore to know that the lorgnette is as common as the vinaigrette in the East. At Tuxedo the men have eye glasses, and the ladies stare back at them through silver and shell lorgnettes. A few Newport belles wear an eye glass even to the dance, but the majority affect the carved stick. In season the fat dowagers and the slim spinsters with quince-color complexions never dream of taking the red rock or vichy waters of Saratoga without putting up their glasses.

Mother of pearl opera glasses, French, 19th c. http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/273006.html?mulR=1250527814|40

 

In opera glasses there are styles by the dozen from which to select. Pearl mountings are passé. The smoked pearl which has enjoyed such splendid popularity is less stylish than the pure white mother of pearl, mounted throughout—casing, slide, bridge and rim; and neither is comparable to the silver bound glass, the Prince of Wales’ choice. The design shown above represents one of the finest Bordou pebbles mounted in sterling silver, exquisitely carved from an Alhambra frieze. The glass is worth $62, but there are cheaper goods that will give just as good satisfaction. After the silver comes the brass glass, treated with black lacquer and bound in seal leather, which may be had as low as $4. There is a Bosch glass for that price, which an emperor might rejoice to own. Aluminium glasses, mounted in alligator or snake skin, sell at $25 and are just the thing for gentlemen, and very popular with the Eastern fellows. The charm of these leather and aluminium glasses is their extreme lightness. Actually you can float a pair in fresh water.

French enamel opera glasses c. 1900 http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/20172/lot/92/

The most artistic glasses are mounted in porcelain and gold, and delicately enameled to represent a sylvan or ball-room scene. A glass of this kind may be bought for $22, because there is little call for the style just now.

Pocket glasses in black leather are worth $18, and those in mother of pearl sell for $15. They are distinctly a club man’s luxury, to be carried in the vest pocket to look at pretty women in the surf, across the street, at the piano, or gliding round the rink.

Miniature Bardou telescope, Second quarter of the 19th century. http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21932/lot/152/

And now a word about the different brands. The Bardou & Sons is the best glass ever put upon the market, and the very one that buyers are most likely to know nothing about, for the reason that the bulk of the trade is controlled by Berlin and Vienna dealers, only a few lenses getting into American markets. The glasses are very powerful, being so carefully centered and highly polished as to strain the eyes after a brief usage. In their construction the manufacturers designed them for quick, short sights, and made no provision for those curious theater-goers who surfeit the eye, and exhaust the subject by a continuous focus. They are the highest-priced glasses in trade, but a poor one is never permitted to leave the factory.

The next best, but the most popular glass, is the Lemaire, of Paris. There are two qualities, and the buyer needs to have his wits about him unless he is amiable enough to take what is offered, pay his money, and smile away.

It is a waste of money to buy a glass of less than thirteen lines, as the field is too small. For that reason vest-pocket styles are rarely satisfactory, because it is impossible to get the proper power in so small a glass. Trying to cover a stage or beach with a lens having the surface of a silver dime is as difficult as viewing a multitude through a key-hole.

The great objection to the aluminium is its yielding quality, the slightest bend or twist being sufficient to double or blur the vision. This defect may be produced by sitting on the glass or by a slight blow, and only an oculist will be able to reset or rebend the frame. With the brass mounting accidents of this sort never occur.

Daily Inter Ocean [Chicago IL] 20 November 1887: p. 21

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil previously reported on spirit-filled opera glasses, carried by persons of irregular habits who should have been refused admission at the door.

Lorgnettes were seen as an affectation when they first became popular.

A FASHIONABLE FOLLY.

Long-Handled Eye Glasses and the Dudines Who Buy and Use Them.

“Will you kindly let me see some of your tortoise shell lorgnettes?” languidly inquired a fashionably dressed young lady the other day as she stood before the counter in a leading optician’s store on Chestnut street and looked the clerk steadily in the eye.

“Beg pardon, do you mean opera glasses or eye glasses?” asked the clerk.

“Eye glasses.”

Thereupon the clerk produced a large box in which was an assortment of the most absurd specimens of the opticians handiwork ever sold for failing eyesight. They were lorgnette eye-glasses, so-called because like the ordinary opera or field glasses, they have to be continually held to the eyes while in use. The eyeglass part is shaped like a pair of spectacles except that instead of two bows to go back over the ears there is a long handle to be held in the hand. Ultra-fashionable people have decided that these are the proper things and in consequence spectacles double eye glasses and even the single eye-glass or “quiz” have been relegated to the use of the vulgar herd. The young lady mentioned bought one of the “lorgnettes,” and went out of the store after paying a ten dollar bill for her purchase.

“Do you sell many of those things?” was asked of the optician.

“Quantities,” he answered, “and the sale of them is constantly increasing. The ‘lorgnettes were introduced from England about two years ago, but it is only lately that there has been anything of a fashionable craze for them. They are the most ridiculous thing in the way of eye-glasses I ever saw. They are clumsy, and one has to hold them up to the eyes whenever they are used, which becomes quite tiresome in time. I sell them to young ladies mostly although their mothers buy them too. They hold them to their eyes with a Lady Clara Vere de Vere air and try to look haughty and well-bred. My observation is that only women with very shallow brain pans use lorgnettes. Many order plain glasses in them and extra-long handles. The longer the handle the more stunning the effect and the shallower the brain…At home the lorgnette users are glad enough to wear spectacles or eye glasses which further goes to prove that the newfangled arrangement is only another of Dame Fashion’s freaks.” Cincinnati [OH] Commercial Tribune 10 November 1886: p. 6

The lorgnette fad returned, along with a renewed enthusiasm for fans, in the 1920s.

OLD FASHION LORGNETTE NEW CRAZE IN LONDON

London, July 28. There seems to be craze for the old-fashioned lorgnette among young women in London at present. It has, in the last few weeks, becoming increasingly rare for a girl to wear spectacles, even of horn, in the ball-room. The modern short-sighted beauty prefers the lorgnette of her grandmother, which she can fold and put away in her vanity bag or hang fanwise over the arm of her partner while she is dancing.

Dancing in the ballroom of the Savoy Hotel last night were several American women how had adopted the lorgnette, among them Miss Mabel Forve of Los Angeles, using one which had square eye pieces and a microscopic handle, one inch in length. Mrs. James Louis of Brooklyn used a lorgnette which had a handle no less than two feet in length; the eye pieces were oblong. Mrs. M.A. Monohan of Chicago had a pair which were heavily encrusted with precious stones and must have been worth a small fortune. Dallas [TX] Morning News 29 July 1923: p. 4

One would think that a handle two feet in length was a reflection of its user’s eccentricity, but perhaps the lady, like so many persons in middle age, needed to hold her lenses at some distance from the object of inspection.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

 

The Snake Garter: 1897

This was sold as a bracelet, but one wonders if it was a garter. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/397161260861916692/

THE SNAKE GARTER

Strange Fad Adopted by the Society Girls of New York

Snake-lovers are becoming constantly more numerous among women who are at leisure to have fads. The newest manifestation of the strange fancy for serpents is the snake garter, which recently made its first appearance in Paris, and which was sketched for the New York World immediately upon its arrival in this country. A counterpart of this not altogether attractive ornament was first made to gratify the whim of a well-known society woman in Paris. Accident disclosed its possession to one of her friends, who was so delighted with it that the secret of the caprice was soon an open one.

Snake garters were many in Paris the next week. The garter is usually made of gold fibers, cleverly knit together so that the whole is made perfectly flexible. It is long enough to coil twice around the leg just below the knee, and is sufficiently elastic to retain its position.

The snake garter is freed from much of the horror naturally attached to it by the elaborate decorations which accompany it. The head is a knob of jewels of various colors, and a line of tiny diamonds runs from the head to the extreme tip of the tail.

Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot 14 August 1897: p. 5

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil really does not understand the appeal of reptilian fashion. The average lady would scream or faint in horror and dismay if a genuine snake were to be found writhing about her leg.  Yet we are expected to believe that a bit of plaited gold tinsel and some tawdry gemstones will cause sensibly snake-averse persons to disregard the revulsion they naturally feel for the species and eagerly embrace ophidian accessories more suited to a lady snake-charmer.

Mrs Daffodil has written before about the garter-mounted pocket-book and garter-flask. There were an infinite number of novelties among these nether necessities.

The latest fashionable extravagance among silly city society ladies are garter buckles. A pair was sold in New York the other day that were valued at eight hundred dollars. The Reading [PA] Times 24 January 1889: p. 2

“HONI SOIT” GARTER

London September 30.

Fashion’s latest fad is in the form of garters with a tiny pocket at the back of the knee for a handkerchief or powder-puff. The garters are made of gold or silver tinsel woven in elastic bands. Auckland Star, 10 October 1924: p. 7

The bicycle girl’s garter-buckle is in keeping with her favorite sport; it is of gold, etched with a figure of a girl in knickers on a wheel. Godey’s Lady’s Book July 1897

And, most stunningly, seen at the New York Horse Show of 1912:

The wonderful diamond garter—or what Mr. John R. Townsend called a “leg bracelet,” worn by a very prominent matron, was the sensation of the hour at the Horse Show. It was a broad band of diamonds clasped on the left leg just below the knee. From it hung a two-inch fringe of smaller diamonds. The matron’s skirt was slit up on the side so as to show the garter.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Jewel-set Gloves: 1896-1899

1940s faux-jewelled gloves. http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/bejeweled-gloves-601225

JEWELS SET IN GLOVES

The Latest Parisian Fad Which Is on Its Way Here.

The latest fad in the way of eccentric dress is the wearing of jewels upon various articles of clothing. This extravagance originated in gay Paris, where the jewelers are falling over one another in their attempts to find some new use to which to put gems.

There are now on the market as a unique result of this attempt to find or devise something new, gloves in the back of which rubies, pearls and emeralds, and, in fact, any gem whose natural color harmonizes or makes a pleasing contrast to the color of the glove. Diamonds seem to be the favorite gem used for this purpose.

The jewels are set in the back of the glove, along the seam and are held in place by means of a small nut attachment. Thus far only a few of the more advanced women of the ultra-fashionable set have taken to wearing the diamond ornamented glove, but the fad is slowly but surely spreading and no man can tell to what extent it may be carried.

The wearing of gems, according to jewelers, has never been so widespread and extensive as at the present time. While a year or two ago it was considered bad form to wear any but the plainest jewels, the extreme will soon be reached, and jewels will be worn in ways never before thought of.

Like every other fashion which originates in Paris, the fad of wearing diamond-backed gloves has crossed the English Channel and a few of the more daring English leaders of fashion have promptly had jewels set in the backs of their gloves. Following the invariable order of such things, the fad will reach this country during the present season.

St Louis [MO] Republic 14 June 1896: p. 21

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: While the jeweled-glove fad was extensively reported from about 1896 to 1899, there were varying descriptions of precisely how the gemstones were attached. Mrs Daffodil is uncertain about the particulars of that “small nut attachment.” For example, this description is from 1897:

Jewelled gloves are now numbered among the many luxuries indulged in by fashionable Parisians, who adorn their gloves, according to the colour of the kid, with real diamonds, rubies, pearls, turquoises, etc. These are fastened on fine chains, which replace the raised seams on the back of the hand. Short gloves are ornamented at the wrists and gauntlets, and they have not unfrequently a jewelled monogram conspicuously placed in the middle.

Hawke’s Bay Herald, 3 April 1897, Page 1

An engraved newspaper illustration, which somewhat inadequately conveys the splendour of jewelled gloves.

And this account of jeweled gloves on the Riviera:

JEWELLED GLOVES,

A New Fashion Started by Leaders of Society at Nice and Rome

Several leaders of society at Nice and Rome have taken to jewelled gloves, and the fashion is said to be spreading. At a Russian dinner on the Riviera, one woman wore jewelled gloves which represented a fortune. The jewels were not set in the gloves, but were detachable. Hoop rings of rare rubies and diamonds encircled each finger. From each ran a tiny gold chain, and these chains were caught together on the back of the hand by a superb cluster of the same stones. The chains then extended to the wrist, where they were fastened to a ruby and diamond bracelet…the wearer was a countess who is a power in European society, and other women are wearing less pretentious ornaments of the sort.

The Times [Richmond, VA] 31 January 1899: p. 7

Certainly the notion of jewelled chains couched to the fabric of the glove or of linked rings and bracelets worn over the glove seem far more practical than painstakingly attaching prong-set gems to the accessory.  It is certainly more palatable than the disagreeable fad of setting jewels into one’s finger-nails. When the jewelled glove fad was revived in the 1930s and 1940s, large and blatantly faux jewels, attached with adhesives, simplified life immensely. The effect, as may be seen at the top of this post, was eminently satisfying.

 Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

“The Promiscuous Giving of Photographs:” 1888

 

A miniature photograph similar in size to the ones mentioned in the story. Her head is about an inch and a half high.

The Latest Thing in Stationery.

One of the latest “fads” among the New York society youths is to have engraved at the bottom of their stationery, a small square, about the size of a postage stamp, in which they insert their own photograph, instead of signing the name. The pictures, when finished and ready for use, are just the size of a postage stamp, and are ordered by the dozens and tens of dozens. Some of them have the eyes, cheeks, lips and hair colored like the original, in which case they become very expensive.

It is hard to determine to what extravagance vanity will carry itself, but it certainly seems a great piece of conceit to deliberately paste one’s likeness upon every letter or note written to acquaintances. This promiscuous giving of photographs is a bad idea at the best. Among dear friends and relatives the exchange is always a pleasure, but when it comes to scattering one’s own pictures broadcast among mere acquaintances, it becomes nothing more or less than conceit. How can anyone be sure what will become of a likeness when in the possession of any but those who will hold it sacred?

It is almost sure to be placed in a row with a dozen others, or “lumped” with the collection and carelessly tossed somewhere in a heap, subject to the inspection and remarks of any who care to gaze at it. Photographs are a reflection of one’s own self, and it seems as if persons lose identity when their features are mixed up with a dozen others, not one of them able to say a word for themselves. Style or no style, the sending of a photograph instead of signing the name, shows a vast amount of self-conceit. Imagine the blow it would receive should the recipient of a missive chance to have forgotten the sender’s name and appearance—a thing which is by no means an impossibility. Toledo Blade

Times-Picayune [New Orleans, LA] 6 January 1888: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Plus ça change… Mrs Daffodil fears that no one heeded the timely warning of the author about the promiscuous distribution of photographs. One can only sigh and turn the page when one sees the hundreds of Facebook albums littered with self-portraits. Those who persist in flaunting these photographs invariably favour states of undress popular on French post-cards and pouting lips that would be stimulating to only the most hardened roué of an ichthyologist. And when one reads of adolescents and politicians caught in the distasteful practice of “sexting,” well, what will  become of a likeness when in the possession of any but those who will hold it sacred?

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes.

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning rituals gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.