THE caprice of fashion in this country would appear incredible to you, if you did not know me too well to suspect me either of invention or exaggeration. Every part of dress, from head to foot, undergoes such frequent changes that the English costume is at present as totally unlike what it was thirty years ago as it is to the Grecian or Turkish habit.

These people have always been thus capricious. Above two centuries ago a satirist here painted one of his countrymen standing naked, with a pair of shears in one hand a a piece of cloth in the other, saying:

“I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here,
Musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear,
For now I will wear this, and now I will wear that,
And now I will wear I cannot tell what.”

When I was a schoolboy every body wore leathern breeches, which were made so tight that it was a good half-hour’s work to get them on the first time. The maker was obliged to assist at this operation: , observe, this personage is not called a tailor, but a maker of breeches, , tailors are considered as an inferior class, and never meddle with leather. When a gentleman was in labour of a new pair of leathern breeches, all his strength was required to force himself into them, and all the assistant operators to draw them on: when it was nearly accomplished, the maker put his hands between the patient’s legs, closed them, and bade him sit on them like a saddle, and kick out one leg at a time as if swimming. They could not be buttoned without the help of an instrument. Of course they fitted like another skin; but wo to him who was caught in the rain in them! , It was like plucking a skin off to get out of them.

The shoes , I am not going back beyond a score of years in any of these instances , were made to a point in our unnatural method; they were then rounded, then squared, lastly made right and left like gloves, to fit the feet. At one time the waistcoat was so long as to make the wearer seem all body; at another time so short that he was all limbs. The skirts of the coat were now cut away, so as almost to leave all behind bare as a baboon, and now brought forward to meet over the thigh like a petticoat. Now the cape was laid flat upon the shoulders, now it stood up straight and stiff like an implement of torture, now was rounded off like a cable. Formerly the half-boot was laced: the first improvement was to draw it on like a whole boot; it was then discovered that a band at the back was better than a seam, and that a silken tassel in front would be highly ornamental, and no doubt of essential use. By this time the half-boot was grown to the size of the whole one. The Austrians, as they were called, yielded to the Hessians, which having the seams on each side instead of down the back, were more expensive, and therefore more fashionable. Then came an invention for wrinkling the leather upon the instep into round folds, which were of singular utility in retaining the dirt and baffling the shoe-black. At length a superior genius having arisen among boot-makers, the wheel went completely round; and at this present time every body must be seen in a pair of whole-boots of this great man’s making.

“Almost all new fashions offend me,” says Feyjoo, ” except those which either circumscribe expense or add to decency.” I am afraid that those reasons are practically reversed in England, and that fashions are followed with avidity in proportion as they are extravagant and indecorous, to use the lightest term. The most absurd mode which I have yet heard of was that of oiling the coat and cold pressing it: this gave its high gloss, but every particle of dust adhered to it; and after
it had been twice or thrice worn, it was unfit to be seen. This folly, which is of but very late date, was too extravagant to last, and never I believe extended into the country. I asked my tailor one day, who is a sensible man in his way, who invented the fashions. ” Why, sir,” said
he, ” I believe it is the young gentlemen who walk in Bond-street. They come to me, and give me orders for a new cut; and perhaps it takes, and perhaps it does not. It is all fancy, you know, sir.” This street serves as the Prado or Alameda for all the fops of rank; and happy is he who gets the start in a new cut, in the fall of a cape, the shape of a sleeve, or the pattern of a button. This emulation produces many abortive attempts, and it is amusing to see the innovations which are daily hazarded, without ever attaining to the dignity of a fashion.

Colour as well as shape is an affair of fashionable legislation. Language is no where so imperfect as in defining colours: but if philosophical language be deficient here, the creative genius of fashion is never at a loss for terms. What think you of the Emperor’s eyes, of the Mud of Paris, and Le soupir étouffé, , the sigh supprest? These I presume were exotic flowers of phraseology, imported for the use of the ladies; it is, however, of as much importance to man, as to woman, that he should appear in the prevailing colour. My tailor tells me I must have pantaloons of a reddish cast; “all on the reds now, sir!” and reddish accordingly they are, in due conformity to his prescription. It is even regulated whether the coat shall be worn open or buttoned; and if buttoned, whether by one button or two, and by which. Sometimes a cane is to be carried in the hand, sometimes a club, sometimes a common twig; at present the more deformed and crooked in its growth the better. At one time every man walked the streets with his hands in his coat pocket. The length of the neck-kerchief, the shape, the mode of tying it, must all be in the mode. There is a professor in the famous Bond-street, who, in lessons at half a guinea, instructs gentlemen in the art of tying their neck-kerchiefs in the newest and most approved style.

Quoted from: Robert Southey: Letters from England. New York: George Dearborn, 1836.