ABSTRACT
Mr. Oscar Wilde, speaking at Ealing last night on the subject of ‘Dress,’ remarked that during the past few years a sense of the beautiful appeared to have revived in the country, although this had not yet extended to the matter of dress, there being nothing of the rational or beautiful about it. At present the great enemy to reform was fashion, and in this respect we had been greatly guided by France whose influence had been most pernicious, dating from the time of William the Conqueror, who, in 1066 found the people of England wearing a dress at once beautiful and simple. The Restoration of Charles II. resulted in the reintroduction of the French influence, and the beautiful and artistic in dress decayed. Underclothes should be sufficiently tight, but not so much so as to impede the free use of the limbs.
