true in the
professional classes, and especially burdensome there; for the income
is usually small, but the social demand great.

There are certain industrial and ethical results from this
preoccupation with clothes which should not be overlooked,
particularly the indifference to quality which it has engendered. The
very heart of the question of clothes of the American woman is
imitation. That is, we are not engaged in an effort to work out
individuality. We are not engaged in an effort to find costumes which
by their expression of the taste and the spirit of this people can be
fixed upon as appropriate American costumes, something of our own.
From top to bottom we are copying. The woman of wealth goes to Paris
and Vienna for the real masterpieces in a season's wardrobe. The great
dressmakers and milliners go to the same cities for their models.
Those who cannot go abroad to seek inspiration and ideas copy those
who have gone or the fashion plates they import. The French or
Viennese mode, started on upper Fifth Avenue, spreads to 23d St., from
23d St. to 14th St., from 14th St. to Grand and Canal. Each move sees
it reproduced in materials a little less elegant and durable, its
colors a trifle vulgarized, its ornaments cheapened, its laces poorer.
By the time it reaches Grand Street the $400 gown in brocaded velvet
from the best looms in Europe has become a cotton velvet from Lawrence
or Fall River, decorated with mercerized lace and glass ornaments from
Rhode Island! A travesty--and yet a recognizable travesty. The East
Side hovers over it as Fifth Avenue has done over the original. The
very shop window, where it is displayed, is dressed and painted and
lighted in imitation of the uptown shop. The same process goes on
inland. This same gown will travel its downward path from New York
westward, until the Grand St. creation arrives in some cheap and gay
mining or factory town. From start to finish it is imitation, and on
this imitation vast industries are built--imitations of silk, of
velvet, of lace, of jewels.

These imitations, cheap as they are, are a far greater extravagance,
for their buyers, than the original model was for its buyer, for the
latter came from that class where money does not count--while the
former is of a class where every penny counts. The pity of it is that
the young girls, who put all that they earn into elaborate lingerie at
seventy-nine cents a set (the original model probably sold at $50 or