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Let us return for awhile to the subject of head-dresses, which is not Avithout importance. The head-dresses of the period may be classified as chivalric and Ossianic, toques and Tam-o'-shanters (bérets), caps and turbans, and finally, hats.

It would need a poet fitly to extol the grandeur, and bewail the decline of the feminine hat. Under the Restoration, nntil 1835, the hat was in its gdorious and triumphant period, it rested proudly on the head, it

A gauze ' buret.'

flaunted its phimes, with gracefully swaying bows, and big satin knots. After the disfiguring ' blunderbuss ' or shako of the Empire—a mere tube enclosing the face at the end of a dark passage—the hat underwent alterations, it was widened and opened. Formerly it had been set quite straight upon the head, now it was daintily plnced sideways upon the hair, which was rolled into large irregular curls. The naj^e of the neck was most becomingly displayed, the slioulders were also seen under the shade of a big hat, for bodices were worn very low-necked, and were not invariably edged with a fluted collerette.

This was the hour of triumph for the hîtt, but its decline was coming fast ; the turned-up brim, horn-shaped, or in a long roll, was about to reappear, ribbons and plumes were to be suppressed, the face was once more to be hidden at the end of the passage, and the neck to be concealed by a big ugly cottage-bonnet. And from tliat time forth wc were to have a whole series of lamentable inventions in eccentric and inelegant styles, even to the 'bibi' bonnet of the second Empire, and the ridiculous ' plate ' hat of 1867.

But a reaction has set in, of late years we have seen some really pretty and becoming hats and bonnets.

Large Restoration Hat.

As for the cap, the ladies of those days wore, when at home, coquettish ' rumpled ' caps, is big as hats, with a crown raised very high to liold the tall comb, and bordered with a quantity of lace and ribbon, which confined their curls, or ' English ' ringlets. These were the last days of elegance in caps ; henceforth the pretty cap was no more to be seen except in the country, for so long as the majestic ' hennins ' of the Norman, or the various winged coifs of the Breton women shall last. After the pretty house-caps worn by the 'lionnes ' of 1830, the decline of the cap set in. The capriciously-quilled cap looked well on the heads of milliners' girls and grisettes, with their pert, Parisian noses, and knowing, mocking eyes ; it was still pretty, and, besides, it was the head-dress that they so lightly toss metaphorically over the highest windmills, but the cap of the grisette afterwards became the ungraceful head-dress worn by fat shopwomen, and it finally fell to the lowest level, that of the porteress.

The belle of 1830 went forth to conquest in the boudoirs of the Chaussée d'Antin, or on the

UNE HLHGAXTH AUX CHAMPSLLYSLHS. RliSTAUKATIOX.

fashionable promenades—the Champs-Elysées or Longchamps—and she captured the hearts of dandies cramped in their high-collared coats,

House-cap.

as a sprightly, elegant person in Avide, undulating skirts, and leg-of-mutton sleeves.

She could hide herself behind under the brim of her bisj hat bristling with ribbons and feathers, by a mere movement of the neck, securing a strict incognito. When she rode in the Bois de Boulogne she wore a coloured habit with leg-of-mutton sleeves, adorned with frogs, or ' Brandenburgs,' or even brightened up by a white canezou.

Unfortunately, she actually ventured at a later date, when on horseback in the country, to substitute the peaked cap, that hideous ' casquette ' which is the disgrace of the nineteenth century, for her large hat with its graceful floating veil.

At this period numbers of pretty, barenecked women were to be seen at the fashionable theatres, in bodices opening in a peak down to the waist over a wide, worked chemisette, the trimmings of the bodice coming up on the shoulders and sleeves. They also wore looped boas, curls and ' heart-breakers ' ^ (inelegantly called spit-curls in England), and had their hair dressed in several different and ^ Accroclie-cœurs.

complicated ways, with flowers, combs, antl sprigs of satin.

Belles of the romantic school tried to outdo one another in mediœval toilettes. They sought

Riding-li.ibit in 1S.30.

tlieir literary pabulum in the Middle-Ages— tlie troubadours of the Vicomte d'Arlincourt, Ossian, Byron, and Walter Scott, had liad tlicir day—in the imj)assioned tirades of the great dramas of the time, Hcrnani, La Tour de Ncsle, and Lucrèce Jjorfj/a, and in the verses, novels, and chronicles of the ' romantic ' writers of young France.

But, even on the stage, the Middle Ages were a good deal like 1830, for notwith-

Head-dress à la Cliiuoisc, 1830.

standing the pains taken to reproduce local colouring, the heroines of those dramas, Isabcan, Marguerite de Bourgogne, or la Belle Ferronière, wore the inevitable leg-of-mutton sleeves, iu connnou witli the fair si»eet;it()rs, and, in reality, the belles of LSod, while trying hard to be mediaeval, were still up to date. Alas ! these pretty, graceful, feathery fashions,

Laryu hat and collerette.

of a ' truculent ' elegance, to employ an expression of the time, passed a^vay. The anti-picturesque bourgeois reaction, which set in with the Arts, achieved a far more rapid triumph ill dross. After a few years fasliion became —must tlie word be said ?—wiser. In 1835 or I80G, fashion, tlie poetic, the romantic, the chivahic, became commonplace, the fashion of shopkeepers and the wives of the National Guard ! In 1835, fashion discarded grace, and adopted clumsiness, by exaggerating the characteristics of 1830. The women were no longer those of Devéria and Gavarni, they are those of Grandville,

Skirts were as big as bells, and untriinmed, made either of plain white muslin, or printed in silly httle patterns like the wall-paper of the same j^eriocl. Big leg-of-mutton sleeves were worn quite limp, hanging loose and low over narrow wristbands ; over the bodice were large worked pelerines edged with lace, and falling below the waist. Add to this a large bonnet of Leghorn or rice-straw, closed and tied under the chin, and the combination is certainly not attractive.

Contemplating the ladies of 1830 ten years later, in 1840, we find them wearing shapeless, uutrimmed skirts, hesitating sleeves which retain just enough of the fulhiess of the leg-of-niuttou to be ugly, ' anyhow ' bodices, and

House dress.

unsightly bonnets tied under the chin by unsightly ribbons.

Hair-dressing has none of the pretty audacity of former times ; flat bands make a cold, hard framework for the face, those ' chaste ' bands, as they were then called, which killed all grace, and all beauty ; there were also the ' English ' ringlets, droopiug like the twigs of the weeping-

Eomautic dress.