With such a girl, the fact that “they” are wearing this or that will be always a minor consideration.  With women trained in matters of clothing, we shall no longer be confronted by the absurdity of identical styles for thick and thin, short and tall, middle-aged and young, rich and poor.  We shall no longer see dress dominating, as it does to-day, the entire lives of thousands of women.  From the woman of wealth who spends a fortune every season upon her wardrobe, all the way down the money scale to the young girl who strains every nerve and spends every cent she can earn to buy and wear “the latest style,” slavery to fashion is an evil gigantic in its proportions and far-reaching in its results.

We have no right to interfere with the woman’s instinct to make herself beautiful.  Rather we should encourage it, and should carefully instruct her in her impressionable years as to what real beauty is.  It is almost safe to say that at present the principle by which the modern woman is guided in deciding the great questions of feminine attire is imitation.  Incidentally, we may remark that nobody profits by such a mistaken foundation except the manufacturer, who moves the women of the world about like pawns on a chessboard merely to benefit his business.  The society woman brings the latest thing “from Paris.”  The large New York establishments sell to their patrons copies of “Paris models.”  The middle-class shops and the middle-class women copy the copies.  The cheap shops and the poor women copy the copy of the copy.  Every copy is made of less worthy material than its model, of gaudier colors, with cheaper trimmings, until we have the pitiful spectacle of girls who earn barely enough to keep body and soul together spending their money for garments neither suitable nor durable—­sleazy, shabby after a single wearing, short-lived—­yet for a few ephemeral minutes “up to date.”

How far this heartbreaking habit of imitation extends in the poor girl’s life we can hardly say.  She marries, and buys furniture, crockery, and lace curtains cheap and unsuitable, like her clothes, always imitations and soon gone, to be superseded by more of the same sort.  What thoughtful woman desires to feel herself part of an influence which leads to so much that is insincere, uneconomical, wasteful both of raw material and of the infinitely more important material which makes women’s souls?  What teacher of young girls has a right to hold back from setting her hand against the formation of habits so undesirable?

And what of the vast output of the factories which turn out cheap cloth, cheaper trimmings, imitations of silk, imitations of velvet, ribbons which will scarcely survive one tying, shoes with pasteboard soles, and all the other intrinsically worthless products which now find ready sale?  When women have been educated to a standard of taste, of suitability, of quality, which will forbid the use of cheap imitations of elegant and costly articles, will not the world gain in bringing such factories to the making of products of real worth instead of their present output?