1870s Quotes

“To dress out of fashion is to make one's self the subject of remark, a contingency which every woman ought to avoid. How would even a man like to go down the street, in knee-breeches, and with powdered hair, as his great-grandfather did? For a woman to be behind fashion is absurd. To make one's self conspicuous, in any way, is a mistake.
- Peterson's Magazine, September 1872”
― Peterson's Magazine

“...the art of dressing well consists in knowing the prevailing fashions, and adapting them to your particular style. What suits one will not always look beautiful on another. There should be discrimination, the result of a cultivated taste. To deviate from the prevailing mode entirely is, on the other hand, a grave blunder; for anything odd makes a lady a laughing-stock, and the dress quite out of fashion is, therefore, to be avoided.
Peterson's Magazine, June 1879”
― Peterson's Magazine

“A lady, unless she wishes to be eccentric, must follow the fashions, at least in a modified degree. The first requisite to dressing well yourself, is to know what is going to be worn. You may then adapt the style to suit your complexion, etc. But you cannot entirely ignore it.
- Peterson's Magazine, October 1875”
― Peterson's Magazine

“Change in fashion is simply the expression of an awakened intellect, groping in small things as in great for something better than it has known; and the use for a manual of fashion, such as we offer is, not to dictate to women any rule which they must blindly follow, but to afford such knowledge of varying costumes, and the manner of making them, that each may clothe herself appropriately, according to her appearance of age, or even mood.
Why should not a woman's purity of mind, her quick eye for color, her aesthetic sense of fitness, be disclosed in her attire as well as in the pictures on her walls or her garden? Very few of us will ever carve a great statue, or paint a great picture but we all have clothes to wear; and it is a duty we owe to ourselves and those around us, to so drape the bodies that God has given us, as to make no discord in this beautiful, pleasant world.
All of us have friends, or, it may be, children, with whom we would have a fair and tender memory. Carelessness and bad taste in dress, so far from being indicative of strength of mind, argues a certain vulgarity of feeling, just as vanity and foppery, on the other hand, prove a weak brain.
Wise men or women make their dress so thoroughly in accordance with their person and character, that nobody notices it any more than the frame of a picture; but to be clothed shabbily, in the hopes that our inner perfections will overshadow our dress, is but the extreme of vanity.
Peterson's Magazine, June 1873”
― Peterson's Magazine