ABSTRACT
The science of clothes, which we call dress, is no doubt a legitimate branch of Art, however mismanaged. To the old Greek artist the human body was the chief point of interest and their highest artistic achievement, as the human face and various textures of vestment have proved the noblest successes of the modern school because most familiar, being incessantly before their eyes. The Greek cared so much more for the form, that he used a conventional type for the faces, and expressed violent passions by attitude, not physiognomy. Circumstances admitted of the Greek artists understanding the human form in such perfection as will probably never again be possible in a highly civilised city. The fault of the Greek dress is its concealment of the clear line of the side and back, which ever since the Normans gave us the close-fitting gunna has been unvaryingly dear to woman.
