MUCH OF The Irish Timesin the 19th century was taken up with imperial wars but one would not necessarily expect to find a militaristic tone imbuing a report from Paris on the latest fashions.
The newspaper’s anonymous fashion correspondent in 1872 was not a woman (?) to allow the recent Franco-Prussian war – which confirmed German unification, caused the collapse of the French Second Empire and led to the Third Republic – get in the way of the proper order of things in the fashion world:
Not only is liberty gone, and the city under martial law, and sovereignty and its pomps suppressed, and palaces burned, and even the exquisite band of the Garde de Paris going off to Boston for the summer, and this year no summer whatever come to us; but, in addition to all these misfortunes, husbands are becoming, with or without cause, odiously jealous, and one unhappy lady is stabbed to death with a sword-cane, and another thrown out of a window, and – most terrible of all blows aimed at Parisian supremacy – that nasty man, Bismarck who is always taking of something, is now attempting to take away the initiative of female fashion from France. You will scarcely believe this. A journal of fashion has recently been established at Dresden, of which the announced object is to free the ladies of Germany from the influence of the great Parisian modistes . . . Goodness gracious!
If the world is to be guided in its robes and its coiffures by the grotesque taste of Germany, people will begin to come to the opinion of the recently deceased rich and ungallant Lord Lowther, who used to say that three superior orders of men existed in the world – heroes in the military order, martyrs of the religious order, and bachelors in the civil order! German ladies, I grant, have a good supply of flesh and blood – a good deal too much often of the former. But German hats, German bonnets, German robes, German boots! It is something frightful to think of if the world be Bismarcked into these as well as into competitive commissions and universal soldierdom. I speak – and not disrespectfully, for their beauty unadorned is probably equal to the goodness of nature of the ladies of North Germany . . .
But France, which will some day regain the belt in war, is not, I can assure you, about to resign for an instant the sceptre of fashion. All the world still come or send to Paris for the modes . . . Even despite martial law and the Republic, they come . . .
First, for the colours. Though the sun has as yet been unpatronising of parasols, still all was prepared for a hot summer. The tender shades of colour which are coming out, therefore, seem greatly to be pitied when they exhibit their exquisite shades beneath clouded skies and western blasts. The weather, however, might have been worse on Sunday. So we were treated to all the new colours, of which blue and grey are decidedly predominant.
What names they give these various shades. Moonlight blue, Russian sky blue, peacock blue, Nile blue. And, then, a new tint of pearl grey, turtle dove grey, rose ash grey, corn grey, fleece grey and half a dozen others.
Striped silks, especially of alternating light grey and pale pink, were a good deal worn.
All the dresses were off the ground, not a long skirt to be seen now out of a ball room. Black velvet ribbon is greatly used in trimming. The protrusion behind is greater than ever. This silly fashion, combined with the continued high heels, gives the figure a bend anything but Grecian in my mind. It is overdone . . . If this finds a place I shall soon give another letter for the ladies, for I have many things to say still.
www.irishtimes.com/ newspaper/archive/1872/0617/Pg005.html#Ar00501
