FASHION. The style of a brief epoch. The term is ordinarily applied to matter of dress, and will be thus treated in this article; but it also indicates an ephemeral taste for any object.
The distinction, then, between costume and fashion, or fashionable dress, depends on per manence of taste. If we visit Munich in the sea son of some one of the great popular fairs, the men and women of the Dachaucr Moos and of the country around the Starnbergersee, as well as people from the Bavarian mountains, which are a part of what we call the Tyrolese Alps, will ap pear in the city with hats, coats, decorative sus penders for their breeches, short breeches, barred and striped stockings and conical hats; the women wearing head-coverings of indescribable kind not seen elsewhere in Europe, and an ar rangement for their short black skirts, very dif ficult to describe, sometimes founded on a hoop like structure, not at the hips, as in the fashion able farthingales and paniers of the eighteenth century, but above them, just at the waist. These are costumes. Ugly as many of them are, they are ancestral, dating from old time, and but slightly modified, at least in the nineteenth cen tury, and in a sense unconscious—that is to say. the people of a given village have never known and do not dream of wearing garments of another style than these. At the same time the ladies of Munich are wearing garments based upon the Pa risian style of the same season or of the season iinmedintely preceding, and the men of this same class of society are wearing partly English and partly French dress, the coats and trousers, Inas, and the rest being closely imitated from one or the other of these models. The style of these gar ments for both women and men varies from year to year and from season to season, not only in the shape of the garment and the fashion of its tailoring or dressmaking, but also in the material itself of which they are composed. It will be as rare at a certain time to see a black frock coat as it will be a few years later to see a blue one, and the changes in women's dress in the colors used and even in the character and intensity of the colors varies very greatly, usually chang ing slowly for a few seasons and then changing much more decidedly into a new style. This is fashion. But the dress of the country people is costume.
Tho fashions are nearly the same throughout western Europe and in the United States of North America ; that is to say, the dress of the most wealthy class is nearly the same in all; that of the class of employees, people of moderate means not capable of indulging every fancy, fol lows at a slower pace, and therefore the dress of a French clerk will differ somewhat from that of an English clerk, and again from that of a man on a proportionately small salary in New York. Some few little peculiarities cling to the people of a nation or a city for a number of years, such as, for instance, the loose and long silk bow worn as a necktie, so common in the north of France, but rarely appearing in other countries except as worn by Frenchmen on their travels. These peculiarities, so far as they go, partake of the nature of costume. Some other peculiarities are merely attempts as it were of fashion which have failed to he universal. Thus, although Ameri can gentlemen generally wear hats of London form, there have been several epochs during the past fifty years when the London hat was very much higher in the crown and more aggressive than any of those worn in America.
It has been thought right, then, to discrim inate carefully between the costume of Europe during the years following the French Revolution (see CosLumE) and fashion, which for Europe makes up the more notable record of the nine teenth century, as being associated with the gov erning and more influential classes. The wear of women has not deviated from the gown and hat with the other garment for street wear called by various names; and for men continuously coat and waistcoat and trousers; but these have va ried in detail. In 1830 and in following years
(reign of Louis Philippe) the frock coat was worn with skirts not very long, but cut so as to spread very widely, so that when the garment was worn buttoned it was extremely dressy in appearance, fitting the body closely and having a very appropriate fullness where it covered the hips. At the same time the dress coat worn for occasions of some ceremony and by elderly men who felt themselves of importance in the world had very broad skirts and was capable of being buttoned across the breast. These were the fash ions in France, and to a great extent in England, though the cut. of the frock coat was different there. These garments were of blue, claret-color, bright brown, and other decided colors, and the fashion lingered on in the United States to 1850 or there about-, at which time a person continuing to sear the colored cloth of a former generation was re marked upon. As late as 1850 many gentlemen of middle age wore a blue dress coat buttoned up with large flat gilt buttons, a white waistcoat, and black, close-fitting trousers, the form which had replaced the far more graceful and dignified pantalon; for which see COSTUME. The women of 1840 and thereabout wore a very reasonable and pleasant costume. The waist of the dress was so made as to be distinctly a bodice, separate from the skirt in make, if not of a different ma terial; the skirt was very loose and -full at the top and fell in ample folds, or if of thinner ma terial, floated softly; altogether it was a very perfectly imagined and satisfactory gown. This was the immediate successor of the close-fitting garment of the Empire mentioned under COS TUME. These gowns in some of their many modi fications lasted until the time of the crinoline or haircloth skirts, which were immediately suc ceeded by the hoopskirts or skirts made of metal springs, all these being used to expand and support the skirt of the gown, so that the dress of women from about 1850 until the sudden dis appearance of the hoops in 1S66 was in a sense grotesque. It was costly and bulky, unnatural in that it did not follow the lines of the body at all. and ugly because it swung in one stiff mass instead of falling in folds, and sometimes in volved disagreeable exposures. After the bell sha-ped hoopskirts, in which the form sometimes affected a hemisphere, from which the body of the women above the waist seemed to rise like the handle of a bell, there came in the hoops of another form, which clung close to the hips and spread widely below. These hoops soon again disappeared. and the skirts became once more somewhat like those of the years before 1850, though not so full.
The later years of the nineteenth century would be more difficult to follow in detail than those of ally other epoch known to us, and this on account of the number of different styles of dress worn by women of means during the same day, or at least the same week. The rage for out-of-door sports, and exercise of different sorts calling, as it is thought, for garments of peculiar cut and even of peculiar material, multiply the number of gowns and other garments which a woman of elegance has in use in one tune. The fashion covers all these alikn; and the dress of the morning at home, that of the afternoon at home, that of the tennis court. or of the golf links, that of riding. that of driving, that of the dinner party and that of the evening entertain ment, that of the theatre and that of the con cert differ very widely from one another, While at the same time they are in the fashion. For information about. faslihm before the nineteenth century, see CoswmE, and consult the authorities there referred to.