Her sleeves are made in open bags Like trousers in the Navy; No more she sweeps the streets, but drags Her sleeves across the gravy.
Elaborate bathing dresses, exhibiting a gradual tendency to reduce the amount of material, are henceforth a frequent subject of illustration. In 1905 _Punch's_ fair bathers remain on the shore and never enter the water as it would absolutely spoil their dresses. We hear less of the matinée hat, but the enormous _coiffures_ depicted in 1907 proved hardly less objectionable to those who sat behind them; and as for hats, the more grotesque and absurd they were the stronger was their appeal. The new hats in 1907, with the brim large at the back, have a sort of sou'-wester effect; and the towering monstrosities depicted at the close of the year make "busbys" look small: Mars is eclipsed by Venus. In 1908 _Punch_ chronicles the advent of the latest importation from France, the revived "Directoire" costume as worn at Longchamps:--
Long languid lines unbroken by a frill, Superfluous festoons reduced to nil, A figure like a seal reared up on end And poking forward with a studied bend;
A shortish neck imprisoned in a ruff, Skin-fitting sleeves that show a stint of stuff, A waist promoted halfway up the back, And not a shred that's comfortably slack;
A multitude of buttons, row on row, Not there for business--merely made for show; A skirt whose meagre gores necessitate The waddle of a Chinese lady's gait;
A "busby" toque extinguishing the hair, As if a giant hand had crushed it there-- Behold the latest mode! and write beneath, "A winter blossom bursting from its 'sheath.'"
I. Mrs. Browne, Mrs. Browne, junior, and Mrs. Browne, junior's little girl, as they were in 1901, and--
[Illustration: AS WE KNEW HER TEN YEARS AGO--AS WE MEET HER TO-DAY]
Miss Maud Allan had not yet been ousted from her eminence by the Russian Ballet and by real dancing, and the repercussion of the cult of the "all-but-altogether" on fashionable costume is well satirized by _Punch_ in this year. By reducing materials to an irreducible minimum this new mania, as _Punch_ logically argues, was likely to be ruinous to trade as well as to railway porters and carriers, since large trunks were no longer necessary and a whole wardrobe could be carried in a handbag or suitcase. Another view of the situation is expressed in the comment of the wife of the frugal Scot who had protested against the idea of her taking to this "awfu' gear": "Hoots, mon! Dinna ye see it's just made wi' aboot hauf the material." Conflicting tendencies can always be simultaneously illustrated in the vagaries of feminine fashion, for along with this alarming "skimpiness" went the cult of huge fur head-dresses and muffs with animals' muzzles thereon. In the lines quoted above the arrival of the "hobble" or "harem" skirt is foreshadowed. In 1910 this strange Oriental monstrosity is ridiculed in the picture of the girl hopping to catch her train, as running was out of the question, and again in the comment of the navvy who feels that _he_ is at last in the fashion with his knee-straps.
