In a recent article in La France, M. Sarcey puts this point very well.  The further we advance, he says, the more apparent does it become that women are to take their share as bread-winners in the world.  The task is no longer monopolised by men, and will, perhaps, be equally shared by the sexes in another hundred years.  It will be necessary, however, for women to invent a suitable costume, as their present style of dress is quite inappropriate to any kind of mechanical labour, and must be radically changed before they can compete with men upon their own ground.  As to the question of desirability, M. Sarcey refuses to speak.  ’I shall not see the end of this revolution,’ he remarks, ‘and I am glad of it.’  But, as is pointed out in a very sensible article in the Daily News, there is no doubt that M. Sarcey has reason and common-sense on his side with regard to the absolute unsuitability of ordinary feminine attire to any sort of handicraft, or even to any occupation which necessitates a daily walk to business and back again in all kinds of weather.  Women’s dress can easily be modified and adapted to any exigencies of the kind; but most women refuse to modify or adapt it.  They must follow the fashion, whether it be convenient or the reverse.  And, after all, what is a fashion?  From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.  From the point of view of science, it not unfrequently violates every law of health, every principle of hygiene.  While from the point of view of simple ease and comfort, it is not too much to say that, with the exception of M. Felix’s charming tea-gowns, and a few English tailor-made costumes, there is not a single form of really fashionable dress that can be worn without a certain amount of absolute misery to the wearer.  The contortion of the feet of the Chinese beauty, said Dr. Naftel at the last International Medical Congress, held at Washington, is no more barbarous or unnatural than the panoply of the femme du monde.

And yet how sensible is the dress of the London milk-woman, of the Irish or Scotch fishwife, of the North-Country factory-girl!  An attempt was made recently to prevent the pit-women from working, on the ground that their costume was unsuited to their sex, but it is really only the idle classes who dress badly.  Wherever physical labour of any kind is required, the costume used is, as a rule, absolutely right, for labour necessitates freedom, and without freedom there is no such thing as beauty in dress at all.  In fact, the beauty of dress depends on the beauty of the human figure, and whatever limits, constrains, and mutilates is essentially ugly, though the eyes of many are so blinded by custom that they do not notice the ugliness till it has become unfashionable.

What women’s dress will be in the future it is difficult to say.  The writer of the Daily News article is of opinion that skirts will always be worn as distinctive of the sex, and it is obvious that men’s dress, in its present condition, is not by any means an example of a perfectly rational costume.  It is more than probable, however, that the dress of the twentieth century will emphasise distinctions of occupation, not distinctions of sex.