Stage Dresses

The Edwardian actress had extraordinary freedom in the choice of her stage costumes. Unless she were appearing in a historical drama, or otherwise playing a part for which a specialist costume was required, she would generally be expected to supply her own stage frocks, at her own expense, appropriate to the character she was engaged to play.

Naturally, any actress would always want to look her best and to show herself off to the best possible advantage, and to this end the top London actresses would commonly frequent the finest London couturiers for their apparel. This could involve considerable expense, although the shrewd actress might negotiate a costume allowance as part of her contract and special deals with the couturiers in return for the publicity advantage of being seen in their creations.

This in turn made the leading actresses the arbiters of fashion for the period as any sagacious woman would be sure to scrutinise what they were wearing as an indicator of the coming modes.

Reproduced below are a collection of articles discussing the importance of dresses for the stage.

(The Daily Mail [London, UK] - 23rd March, 1910)
Dress Problems of the Stage
SOME DIFFICULTIES OF WHICH THE AUDIENCE KNOW LITTLE
WHY IT IS HARD TO WEAR A HAT ON THE STAGE

Although many of the newest fashions find their way at once, or are even produced, on the stage, there are many considerations that guide an actress in the choice of her frocks which are not familiar to many women, and which they might well bear in mind in criticising the dress of their favourite heroine.

How often has a climax been marred by the heroine having the wrong coloured gown, or by the mere fact of a nodding plume quivering ludicrously in sympathy with its wearers excess of emotion! Such mistakes are apt to arise partly from the way in which the choice of gowns is arranged. In some cases, when it is left to the discretion or indiscretion of the actress, she may perhaps be tempted to select the prettiest gown that she can find to suit her own particular style of beauty, without any regard to the scene which is to form a background for it, but she rarely succumbs.

DRAMATIC EFFECT OF CLOTHES

Even when the artistic skill of a celebrated painter is requisitioned, however, it may occur that he will entirely miss the deep significance of the dramatic effect of clothes, which every woman understands in some degree.

In one case a leading actor, well pleased with reiment of cloth of gold and black velvet, claimed the approval of an expert in these matters. "Let me see the costume in the scene before I say anything," said the lady. And her verdict afterwards was "Why, all your attendants had got on bits of your dress!"

MISS IRENE VANBRUGH'S FAVOURITE GOWN of palest pink satin, embroidered all over with gold.

Some of our actresses have in the highest degree this sense of what is dramatically correct. Miss Violet Vanbrugh, for instance, is not only alive to the importance of suitable dressing, but her gowns have that delightful touch of originality which comes from having been designed by their owner. She is one of the few women to realise the value of the cotton frock on the stage, and onlookers frequently do not realise that some of her most successful gowns are made of this material.

Simplicity of outline and an apparent preference for kimono styles characterise Miss Irene Vanbrugh's choice. She loves all soft shades of colour. The photograph shows her in her favourite gown, a most artistic creation in palest pink satin, embroidered all over with gold.

Though strict on the point that the individuality of the character, and not of the actress, should determine the richness or otherwise of a stage gown. Miss Lillah McCarthy's natural inclinations always lead her to choose the simplest style of clothes that can be worn to accord with any part.

SIMPLE GOWNS IDEALISED

She says that the stage may set a bad example of excess in dress by exploiting extravagant fashions unnecessarily, and although she thinks it advisable that everything on the stage should be idealised, she does not believe it necessary to have country clothes cut by celebrated French couturiers. The success of her gowns serves to illustrate the fact that simple plain garments are usually better for the stage than those which are over-elaborate.

Hats on the stage are almost always a failure, chiefly because they have to be worn so far back in order not to hide the wearer's face from the gallery. Miss Lillah McCarthy is, however, one of the few people who look well in a hat, as she has a natural way of holding her head rather high, and can place a hat at the normal angle without shading her features too much.

American actresses do not seem very happy in their stage clothes. One well known actress, for instance, elected for a most pathetic last act to wear a small sailor hat perched on the front of her coiffure. An intelligent critic gasped in wonder as to how she would ever get through a particularly harrowing scene in such headwear.

UNSYMPATHETIC MATERIALS

The actress, who is naturally sensitive to the influence of clothes, knows that she cannot do justice to a given part if clad in unsympathetic materials and inharmonious colours. Miss Ellen Terry has the keenest appreciation of this fact; moreover, she has her daughter Miss Edith Craig, who is strongly imbued with the dramatic side of the question, and designs the garments which so exactly fit any part in which her mother appears. As a direct illustration of how the question operates. Miss Terry was acting in a play in which she was destined by the celebrated artist who had designed the costumes to appear as a young girl in shades of red and maroon in the first act, and to wear a heavy purple cloth gown, a little later in a death scene.

Miss Terry expostulated, at first in vain. She wanted to have the golden colour in which she always looks so delightful for the first act, and white for the second. No; a yellow dress was impossible. That colour had already been fixed upon for another of the characters, and the gown was made.

It was pointed out that the said character did not appear at all in the first act, and was not, according to the action of the play, even born at he time! So at the last moment Miss Terry secured the golden and white gowns, and no one who saw her in the latter will ever forget the effect of those simple, careless, voluminous, soft draperies, nor could they deny the tremendous influence of exactly the right clothes in enhancing a deeply impressive scene.

"Very often when people come away dissatisfied with a play it is because they have been unconsciously influenced by inappropriate dress, for correct dress helps the acting and also helps to create the right atmosphere," said Miss Edith Craig in an interview on the subject. "When, however, they feel that the dress is right, yet do not remember what it was, then a triumph has been achieved."

She described how she sets to work when she has a play to dress, or only a single gown, to design for her mother or someone else. First of all, to the surprise of everyone, she insists on reading the play. Next she inquires what kind of a set there will be for each scene. Then with the scenery, the emotion brought out in the scene, and the individuality of every character strongly in view, she closes her eyes and sees a distinct and vivid mental picture of the whole thing as she would like it to look when complete.

Finally she opens her eyes and sets to work to search far and near for the materials and colours which will enable her to put her vision into concrete form. She has frequently tried as many as half a dozen materials for one gown until she has arrived at an effect that completely satisfied her. Sometimes this is best achieved with the commonest stuffs, such as linen, and even mosquito net was used on one occasion.

An interesting story is attached to Miss Terry's red gown in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," in which play she is to appear during the Shakespeare Festival at His Majesty's Theatre. She wanted something simple, as best adapted to the character. A soft linen was specially woven and the gown composed of it. It was, however, not an absolute success, and exactly eight hours later Miss Craig had made another to take the place of it. There was no time to search London for the correct shade, and at the critical moment Miss Craig's eye fell upon Sir Henry Irving's dress as Cardinal Wolsey.

The long train of this was made from real cardinal's silk, a fabric specially dyed in Rome, and this was immediately seized upon and cut up. At ten minutes to the time that the curtain rose that night Miss Terry was sitting in her dressing-room quite calmly and imperturbably waiting for her gown. When her cue came she was ready, though the black stencilling on her white skirt, which was used instead of the embroidery that it was impossible to do, was still wet.

L. J.

(The Daily Mail [London, UK] - 30th April, 1900)
HOW MUCH DO DRESSES HELP A PLAY?
Leading Actresses in Recent Productions Discuss the Question and Describe Their Gowns

Detail in matters theatrical is made a cardinal virtue, and the amount of attention paid to the setting of a play by those who are responsible for it is as great as that given by the actors and actresses in them to their study of the parts they are to assume. In order to gauge the importance of the topic of dress as it affects the success or failure of a theatrical production, a trio of celebrated actresses, who have just appeared in fresh productions, were asked to give their views on this page, and the interesting result is here given.

Do I consider that dress is an important factor in the making of a play? My answer is Yes, and No. Should the question be put in this way: Would a woman dressed badly (that is, inappropriately) be likely to create a part as convincingly thus garbed as she would if time, money, and thought had been laid out upon her toilettes, I should reply she would not.

To the artistic, environment means so much. I myself, for example, love brightness, colour, light, and all things beautiful. I delight in flowers, find my keenest pleasure in outdoor pursuits, and especially in the freedom and absolute independence of cross-country riding. I cannot bear to live cabined, cribbed, confined. My favourite house is one with windows that look all ways, not a house in a terrace; and I want a garden, too. I want to be able to command every point of view. To a woman of my temperament, therefore, it would be a positive hurt if I were inappropriately dressed for any stage part I had to play.

Then, again, I am very sure that dress helps the audience to gauge an actress's meaning; it elucidates her reading of the part she is impersonating. Even men who, if they are to be believed, never receive a detailed picture of the gowns they see worn by women, absorb an impression from them. It, for example, would astonish and shock the most unobservant husband if his gentle, refined wife were suddenly to deck herself out in a costume remarkable for its flamboyancy. Yes; most decidedly dress does reveal character, and is therefore a remarkably potent item in the proper formation of a theatrical part.

I am acting now Zaza, and Zaza instances very prominently my realisation of the importance of stage dresses. Such a miserably illiterate person would dress, I imagine, as I dress myself for the part. I go travelling in white; a flimsy perishable white tulle toque is brought to me at my request, trimmed with a pure white ostrich feather. What lamentably bad form for a railway journey! But then I know it suits me; I am only desirous of looking well. I care nothing for what is appropriate because I am centuries removed from the refinement of the subject of chiffons, the very art of dress, which teaches the tenet of suitability to be of more importance than any other in securing a beautiful effect.

In the morning for breakfast I put on another gown that is equally out of place, because I want to look my very best. It is the frock illustrated here, of which the skirt is brilliantly red, with great handsome sequinned patterns embroidered over it, and the bodice white, also richly spangled. Observe the contrast. Observe the effect of the union of scarlet and purity. It is garish; it is vulgar; it is common; it is in the worst possible taste for morning wear and a tete-tete breakfast. But then poor Zaza is garish and vulgar, sordid and mistaken, and even then at her most purposeful moment, when she longs, with, all her sad yearning heart, to have everything correct as she conceives it, she is as wrong as wrong can be.

That fourth act is my biggest one, and I chose the red and white frock with a second intention, as well as the one I have just named. I chose it because, in the intensity that follows, the pathos of it becomes impressive. I know that Zaza's hour of agony is made all the balder and more unrelieved by the smiling presence of that senseless mass of frivolity which she put on that morning with so much hope that all would go well, as she, misguided creature, deemed well to be. It is the dress in which I feel happiest, of all those I wear in the play, the one that seems to suit the moment best. In the final act I have on white, with delicate embroideries of mousseline de soie, a gown as refined and beautiful as the others were bizarre, simply that I may point the contrast between what Zaza was and what she became when, educated in sorrow's stern school, she at last perceived the other side of existence, the ennobling influence of pure thought, hard work, and high aspirations.

Judging By the lavish generosity of the modern theatrical manager I should say that lovely dresses were held by expert judges to be one of the most important details in the presentation of a new play. Necessarily it is a detail only; simply for the sake of a sight of sumptuous frocks no audience would go to a theatre. It would prefer a walk through the shoppy streets of London. The play's the thing primarily without a doubt, but among the accessories of it that are fraught with great issues are the frocks the actresses wear, and may I add, the way in which they are worn. In Kitty Grey I have to dress eight different times, and always in most lovely frocks - frocks it is a pleasure to put on. All were made in London, and one I designed myself - the pink silk masquerade gown, overlaid with branches of dew-spangled roses.

In olden times I believe the makeshifts actresses were put to to accomplish even the most mediocre dresses were pathetic. Anything, it was thought, would do, for the footlights would glorify it into something rich and rare. So cotton-backed velvets were given to stage queens for their robes of state, and glass jewellery to the great ladies of society, with dreadful paper-like satin frocks, all dingy with age and of the most primitive cut and fit. Now all that is changed.

One of my gowns in Kitty Grey I know cost fifty guineas, and I dare say others were still more dear. The frock to which I refer is composed of soft cream-coloured lace, overlaid with blue satin leaves and roses, embroidered with silk, much of it simply round dots - dots are to be fashionable this season - and all done by hand. It is beautifully ruffled at the skirt's hem, and has a most pretty bodice. Another one I greatly like is of deep rose-pink moussoline, with encrustations of yellow braid lace, touched with black and white velvet; a lovely gown to wear.

I am Irish, and superstitious, and nothing would induce me to wear green upon the stage. It is an unlucky colour. My favourite stage hue is pink, and if I can I always contrive to have one dress of that tint in my stage wardrobe. Personally, I like to look well, both on and off the stage. It is pleasant to feel nicely dressed, and to know that others think one successfully garbed. I also feel, too, that I can act so much more amusingly if my gown helps me than if it is mutely neutral. I can be witty in something smart, whereas a dowdy frock would so depress me that all my efforts to sparkle would be utterly in vain.

My sympathies invariably centre round the stage heroine, who at the outset of her nightly career bears becoming magnificence upon her shoulders and in the last act must figure in unbecoming penury.

I think that the well-dressed Society woman, and, moreover, the woman who dresses on the stage just as she dresses at home, is an essentially modern production, and a particularly diverting and interesting one - and since so many plays are written round such women, I fancy, the public is of my opinion.

I always design my own stage, frocks and millinery, and have both made under my own direction. This I do with a double object. I cannot bear to meet a gown I am wearing in the Row, in Piccadilly, on the lawn at Ascot, at Aix-les-Bains, anywhere and everywhere confronting me, and that is a cross I have had to bear on more than one occasion when I have paid a big price to a big dressmaker for an "exclusive" model. Therefore, since such out of Paris are difficult to obtain, I am my own designer.

My other object in spending time and trouble over my toilettes is that I think the stage ought to help to create the fashions. I make a point of not playing in detrimentally expensive satins, silks, and brocades (except when such are absolutely necessary), but choose instead quiet cloths, and this is because I am so anxious to appear in something from which each member of the feminine portion of my audience may glean a hint.

The luxurious occupants of the stalls may like to reproduce my best frocks detail for detail perhaps; suburban visitors may want a hint for a bolero or sash for a dress that is going to be dished up out of two or three old ones (the sort of dress, by the way, that is my special pride and delight), and the little housemaid m the pit, who has saved up her half-crown for a treat at the theatre, I hope seeing a particularly nice idea in collars, goes home with the fixed intention of reproducing it for her next new Sunday out dress.

I feel very strongly that stage frocks should be more characteristic than effective, just as stage decorations should be. Realism appeals to an audience. No one would applaud an actress who, playing the part of a mechanic's wife, were to put on brocade for the breakfast-table.

That is an outside instance, of course, but I like the principle to be applied to the very finest tests. It does so annoy me when I read articles upon dress, such as one I saw the other day, which asserted, with sweeping finality, that no woman, can in these days possibly dress well under £600 a year. Well one knows that there are duchesses who dress on less, and that the very smartest and most appropriately garbed members of society who pay attention to the matter and scheme out their own toilettes with the help of their clever maids often need not a penny more than £100 per annum out of which to secure the toilette triumphs they achieve.

I have learnt a good deal by designing my own frocks, and of one point I am certain. It is the fashion now to go to the Old Masters for ideas - and very beautiful those ideas are to be sure. But they can only seldom be adapted successfully to modern day costumes; they need the old figures in vogue then - the hoops, the high waists, often, too, the powdered hair - to carry out the proper impression. I have sometimes fallen so in love with a collar or a fichu from one of the photogravures of Old Masters that line the walls of my bed-room that I have had it copied for a frock in course of being made, but it has had to be ripped off immediately it was tried on. It didn't do. It looked like something stolen, not as if it were anything that belonged to the scheme as a whole. Old ideas are delightful if all the costume is to be picturesque, but unless - well, unless they are best memories instead of facts.

One of my gowns in "The Passport" should convey a really valuable wrinkle to those who recognise it. It is what I may call an Ascot frock of pink voile over a deeper pink silk foundation, and between the foundation and the silk (this is the emphatic point) there is a layer of chiffon to give the voile depth and softness. Is it not strange, that descriptions and pictures of my own stage-frocks, and those of others, convey no impression to me, and yet I am sure the good offices of the Press in making these points so universally clear cannot too highly be praised? I am not one of those women who like to keep sartorial secrets to themselves, and, indeed, I think there are very few of those old-fashioned, selfish beings left who could not bear to have their frocks copied, and would not part with their dressmaker's address for a mint of money. We live in a good-natured age, happily for us, and one that is full of opportunities.

(The Daily Mail [London, UK] - 30th April, 1900)
MY PRETTIEST STAGE DRESS
CONFESSIONS OF SOME OF OUR MOST POPULAR ACTRESSES

What the stage wears to-day society will wear to-morrow. That fact most people recognise, for it is behind the footlights that one invariably first sees forthcoming fashions. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the stage is a natural dictator of fashions. Every actress appreciates the value of dress on the stage, and it cannot be denied, that she, above all women, understands the art of looking her best, a fact which is fully borne out by the following confessions of some of our leading actresses regarding what they consider their prettiest modern stage dress.

Fashions change so quickly that one can readily understand the remark of Miss Sarah Brooke to the effect that what she thought pretty in one play "would appear awful a little later. But perhaps," she continues, "my most successful stage dresses were those I wore in 'Raffles,' made by Mme. Hayward, and in 'The Crisis,' with Miss Evelyn Millard, at the New Theatre, made by Mme. Handley Seymour. In the latter play the gown named the 'Acolyte' which I wore was perhaps the prettiest. It was composed of an under-dress of Venetian red, most handsomely embroidered with gold, the over-dress being of cream muslin, also embroidered with gold, and with a magnificent flounce of wonderful Venise lace falling to the bottom at the back. The bodice was also composed of the same wonderful Venetian red, veiled with cream muslin and Venise lace falling over the sleeves."

"It is rather difficult," confesses Miss Lilian Braithwaite, "to select among the many beautiful modern dresses that I have worn on the stage one to be called 'my prettiest stage dress.' There were many pretty dresses that I wore while playing under Sir George Alexander's management at the St. James's, ranging from Lady Windermere's beautiful gowns to the fresh, dainty muslin worn by the little Kathie of 'Old Heidelberg.' Recently, perhaps, the two dresses that have given me most pleasure were a grey charmeuse which the repentant Mrs. Frampton wore in the last act of 'Nobody's Daughter,' and the black velvet gown worn by Mrs. Panmure in two acts of Sir Arthur Pinero's comedy 'Preserving Mr. Panmure.' They were both specially designed for me by Lady Duff-Gordon, and were both, I think, extraordinarily beautiful gowns. I am very keen on line in dress, and, of course, the fashions of the last two years have allowed us to approach very near the long straight lines of the ideal Greek costume. Both these dresses were, I think, very smart, very chic, and up to date, and both were certainly artistic. That is surely high praise, the highest possible for a beautiful gown. I only hope the audiences admired them as much as the wearer did."

It is generally agreed by fashion experts that some of the most beautiful dresses seen on the stage for a considerable time were those worn by Miss Kate Cutler and Miss Violet Vanbrugh at the Garrick in Mr. Alfred Sutro's play "The Fire Screen." Miss Kate Cutler thinks, to quote her own words, "that of all the beautiful dresses I have worn on the stage, the best of all is that in which I appeared in the last act of this play. It was of blue chiffon over flesh-pink satin, and veiled with grey chiffon draperies with touches of green and rose-colour. It had a silver girdle with an end and a big tassel of all the colours mixed. I thought it was quite lovely, and so did everyone who saw it."

Another dress which Miss Cutler thinks almost as charming, and which she wore in the same play, was of vieux rose chiffon over white chiffon, edged with a wide band of silver embroidery and blonde lace. The corsage was cut a little low, and opened down the front to show a chemisette of lace studded with tiny blue bows. Pink satin outlined the edges as well as the kimono-shaped elbow sleeves. A wide folded band of Chinese brocade, fastened with a large flat bow, adorned the waist. The skirt was draped at the back to form an oval-shaped train, and was also draped at the sides over an under-petticoat of lace, which rested on a band of pale blue satin.

In the same play Miss Violet Vanbrugh wore an elaborate dress, which she considered exceedingly becoming. It was of putty-coloured charmeuse, arranged with a corsage fastened at one side and drawn in at the waist beneath a band composed of cords in blue, red, orange, and silver, other cords of the same colours falling from the belt in front. The corsage, cut out a little at the neck, was edged with a cording of black and orange, and these colours were repeated in the buttons on the sleeves.

"I am inclined to single out," said Miss Compton (Mrs. R. C. Carton), when approached for her opinion of her prettiest stage dress, "the gown I wore as the Duchess of Bracebridge in 'Mr. Hopkinson.' During the second act I was compelled to wear a good many diamonds, and I took a hint from the jewellers shop windows, and wore a perfectly plain dress of dark blue velvet. That the combination proved unusually effective was confirmed by public and private opinion." Happening to mention, however, that many ladies had been impressed with the dresses she wore in her husband's latest play, 'The Bear Leaders,' Miss Compton agreed that an exceedingly handsome dress was the one in which she appeared in the ballroom scene. This dress was of violet satin, arranged on the corsage with white net, sewn with tiny beads, and with motifs of silver embroidery. The sleeves fitted on the shoulders with straps of beads, while folds of the purple satin were carried from the sides to the waist, where they were held by a silver motif, giving the corsage a very becoming line. The satin skirt was cut up one side to show an under-petticoat of white beaded lace, while a square diamond buckle held the draperies of the satin together.

In the last act of Mr. Bernard Shaw's "Fanny's First Play," Miss Lillah McCarthy (Mrs. Granville Barker) wears a gown made of white silk crepe with pink ninon tunic, embroidered with tiny white beads and pink silk floss, a dress which she considers the prettiest she has ever worn, while Miss Julia Neilson (Mrs. Fred Terry) does not think she has ever worn anything so becoming as the black satin and tulle dress, trimmed with silver and brilliant glistening jet embroidery, which she wore in the third act of "The Popinjay."

Some fascinating models of elegance and artistic beauty were worn by Miss Marie Illington and Miss Mabel Love in "98.9" which Mr. Robert Loraine produced at the Criterion, and those who saw the play will probably agree with Miss Illington, who recently remarked that it would be difficult to imagine a more charming dress than that which was designed for her to wear in the first act of that play. It was of old-gold satin, veiled with golden brown chiffon, with a velvet waistbelt. The ninon tunic was arranged over an underdress of charmeuse, across the front of which bands of wide gold insertion were arranged, crossing in the centre. The skirt, cut with a narrow square train, was edged with gold galon, and this, together with the gold insertion, appeared on the kimono corsage of ninon and lace. The plain belt of gold coloured velvet had one long loop falling perfectly straight down the back to the edge of the tunic, the square train being of the satin.

Miss Mabel Love's favourite dress was the evening frock she wore in the second act of the same play. This was of ivory-white satin, the material being drawn across the front of the skirt, and caught at the right side with a diamond and ruby ornament, being continued to the back, where its two leaf-like folds formed a short train. Diamond and ruby trimming formed the corsage and sleeves, a band of similar trimming, to which was affixed a giant pink osprey, forming a striking head-dress.

A really wonderful array of lovely dresses was to be seen in the second act of Sir Arthur Pinero's play "The Mind the Paint Girl," at the Duke of York's Theatre, and Miss Nina Sevening does not think she has worn a prettier dress on the stage than the one in which she appeared in this act. It was composed of palest pink chiffon, veiling strips of silver trimming. The drapery was of rose-pink charmeuse, a full long sailor collar being made of pink chiffon, with sprays of silver embroidery, edged with silver trimming, and a piping of pale rose-pink satin. This collar was finished in front with silver embroidery stole ends, which were themselves finished with silver tassels. The waistband was composed of narrow strips of satin in two shades of blue, one dark and one light, with buckles at the front and side made of silver bugles, with touches of blue and pink.

"I have worn more elaborate dresses perhaps, but I do not think I have worn one so dainty and charming as that in which I appear in the first act of 'The Sunshine Girl'," says Miss Olive May. "It is of embroidered lawn, the trimmings being of Valenciennes, the pale blue cord at the throat being finished with tassels. The belt of folded white satin is made with bow and ends, the front of the frock being decorated with blue satin-covered buttons. The lower part of the skirt is trimmed with blue satin ribbons run under the Valenciennes, while the side of the skirt is decorated with little blue satin bows. With this frock I wear a hat of white straw, underlined with blue and trimmed with a flower aigrette."

Miss Iris Hoey, in the second act of "A Member of Tattersall's," at Whitney's Theatre, wore a gown which she considers is probably her most becoming stage dress. It was of pearl white tulle, made over white satin, with waistband of pink, and gathered closely round the waist. The bodice was outlined at the neck and edge of sleeves with rather large single pearls, at the waist being a large shamrock-shaped ornament of dull gold and silver. A hem of pink roses, crushed closely together, formed a thick ruche round the edge of the gown, which was also veiled with tulle. The skirt had a double drapery of tulle, which fell from the sides of the waist, and was caught round at the back and each side with a pink rose. Altogether a dress to be desired, and one perfect in artistic feeling and combination of delicate colouring.

In connection with these beautiful and evanescent triumphs of the art of dress, a reflection cannot but arise of curiosity mingled with regret. What were the stage gowns of the past, in which such actresses as the glorious Mrs. Siddons, the irresistible Peg Woffington, the fascinating Mrs. Bracegirdle, and sweet "Nell of Old Drury" played their famous parts, and achieved their fleeting triumphs? How interesting it would be to study their stage dresses, as we may study the sartorial relics of long-dead queens and empresses.

Why, too, should not these lovely creations of the modern stage be preserved for posterity in a theatrical museum? They are in many cases worthy of immortality, if only on account of their intrinsic beauty, and if to that factor we add their historic interest for future generations of lovers of the stage, there is sufficient ground surely for the matter to be considered seriously. The cost would be insignificant compared with the interest to be derived from such a collection.