Declaration of Fashion Independence
The New York Daily Tribune, July 1851.
THE NEW COSTUME.
Highly Important!
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, July 4, 1851.
When, in the course of passing events, it becomes necessary for the women of one nation to break off the bonds which Fashion has thrown around them, and to assume among the females of other nations a separate and distinct dress, to which the laws of Nature and a regard for their health so fully entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to this assumption.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all women are created equal—that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of health—that to secure these rights dresses are instituted, deriving their fashion from the consent of those who adopt them—that whenever any form of dress becomes destructive of health or comfort it is the right of woman to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new dress formed and shaped on such principles, and arranging its contour after such a mode as to them shall seem most likely to promote their health and insure their happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that costumes long established should not be changed for light and trifling causes—and accordingly woeful experience hath shown that womankind are more disposed to suffer, while the evils arising from their costume are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the long and very inconvenient skirts to which they have been accustomed. But when the long trains of their dresses, invariably sweeping the pavements as they move along, evince a design on the part of the Tyranness Fashion to reduce our women under its absolute despotism, it is their right—it is their duty to throw off the long and cumbersome skirts, and to provide shorter ones for their future wear.
Such have been the patient sufferings of our American women, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter the former system of dress and to adopt other modes for their future comfort.
The history of the present TYRANNESS FASHION is the history of repeated injuries to the comfort of the women and to their pocketbooks having its direct object the constant soiling of their garments, and the ruination of their health. To prove this, let facts be submitted to all candid women, and to the rest of the world.
She has refused her assent to those modes of dress most wholesome and necessary for the preservation of female health.
She has forbidden her mantua-makers to introduce any new costumes, however handsome and convenient, until her consent has been obtained.
She has refused for the accommodation of large districts of women, the privilege to dress in frocks or trowsers—a right most inestimable to them and formidable to their tyrants only.
She has aimed to prevent the women from assembling together to deliberate on the advantages which would result from throwing off the yoke of the TYRANNESS, for the sole purpose of forcing them to a constant compliance with her own measures.
She has invariably assailed with ridicule all those of the sex who, with womanly firmness, have endeavored to assert their rights and regain their independence.
She has endeavored to prevent the adoption of the new costume in all the States, for the purpose of enabling foreigners to maintain that influence in regard to the modes of dress which they have always exerted over the women of the country.
She has combined with dressmakers abroad to subject our women to modes of costume foreign to, and injurious to, their American constitution—prohibiting them, by acts of pretended jurisdiction—
From venturing to promenade our streets in the proposed new and every way becoming female apparel;
From consulting their own comfort and convenience in regard to locomotion and the free use of their limbs;
From abandoning the long skirts to voluminous in their folds, and so prejudicial to health;
From cutting off their long trains in all parts of the United States;
From introducing any new costume disapproved of by a Paris mantua-maker.
She has, by forcing upon us her extravagant mode of dress, plundered our pockets, committed ravages on our health, and destroyed the lives of many of our people.
A TYRANNESS who thus subjects us to the inconveniences and injuries arising from the introduction and maintenance of her foreign fashions, as unfit to be the ruler of free women.
We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which requires our immediate separation from foreign mantua-makers, and hold them, in regard to the proposed new costume as we would all others—in opposition, enemies—in support, friends.
We, therefore, the free women of the United States of America, in our various meetings throughout the Union assembled, appealing to the civilized world and “all the rest of mankind” for the rectitude of our intentions, and with a fixed determination to consult our comfort, our convenience and our health, do solemnly publish and declare, that in regard to our dress we of right ought to be free and independent and that henceforward and forever we are absolved from all allegiance to the TYRANNESS FASHION; that all connection between us and the Paris mantua-makers ought to be totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent women, we have full power to adopt and wear the new costume of such mode and shape as best becomes us, walking forth, redeemed and disenthralled from the long trains in which we have hitherto been enslaved, and enjoying that ease and comfort in the new dress to which we are so justly entitled.
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of enlightened and liberal men, we mutually pledge to each other our countenance, our influence, and our sacred honor.
[Numerously signed.]
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