THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF WOMAN'S DRESS. 199 



session of other virtues than that of a well-favored person only. 

 In this latter direction lies what was to evolve into dress. By the 

 time dress emerged from the primitive efforts of the savage to 

 beautify himself with gandy additions to his person, it was al- 

 ready an economic factor of some importance. The change from 

 a purely sesthetic character (ornament) to a mixture of the aes- 

 thetic and economic took place before the progress had been 

 achieved from pigments and trinkets to what is commonly under- 

 stood by apparel. Ornament is not properly an economic cate- 

 gory, although the trinkets which serve the purpose of ornament 

 may also do duty as an economic factor, and in so far be assimi- 

 lated to dress. What constitutes dress an economic fact, properly 

 falling within the scope of economic theory, is its function as an 

 index of the wealth of its wearer or, to be more precise, of its 

 owner, for the wearer and owner are not necessarily the same per- 

 son. It will hold with respect to more than one half the values 

 currently recognized as "dress/' especially that portion with 

 which this paper is immediately concerned woman's dress that 

 the wearer and the owner are different persons. But while they 

 need not be united in the same person, they must be organic 

 members of the same economic unit ; and the dress is the index 

 of the wealth of the economic unit which the wearer represents. 



Under the patriarchal organization of society, where the social 

 unit was the man (with his dependents), the dress of the women 

 was an exponent of the wealth of the man whose chattels they 

 were. In modern society, where the unit is the household, the 

 woman's dress sets forth the wealth of the household to which 

 she belongs. Still, even to-day, in spite of the nominal and some- 

 what celebrated demise of the patriarchal idea, there is that about 

 the dress of women which suggests that the wearer is something 

 in the nature of a chattel ; indeed, the theory of woman's dress 

 quite plainly involves the implication that the woman is a chattel. 

 In this respect the dress of women differs from that of men. 

 With this exception, which is not of first-rate importance, the 

 essential principles of woman's dress are not different from those 

 which govern the dress of men ; but even apart from this added 

 characteristic the element of dress is to be seen in a more unham- 

 pered development in the apparel of women. A discussion of the 

 theory of dress in general will gain in brevity and conciseness 

 by keeping in view the concrete facts of the highest manifesta- 

 tion of the principles with which it has to deal, and this highest 

 manifestation of dress is unquestionably seen in the apparel of 

 the women of the most advanced modern communities. 



The basis of the award of social rank and popular respect is 

 the success, or more precisely the efficiency, of the social unit, as 

 evidenced by its visible success. When efficiency eventuates in 



