Good ol' clothes - conservative clothing and attitudes; In Defense of Elegance - Cover Story

National Review, Oct 28, 1996 by Florence King

Traditional fashions have done wonders for female chastity, and even when they didn't, the fun was hardly worth the trouble.

Whenever I read a period novel, I always wonder how a woman unable to dress and undress without a maid could manage the logistics of an assignation. How could she get out of all those clothes, and then get back into them? What about the whalebone stays? Either her lover did them up for her, or else she knotted the strings around the bedpost and made like a dray horse, either of which would shatter illusions. I imagine she didn't have to. There were some blithe spirits, but most women behaved themselves, and at least some of that virtue had less to do with godliness than with the daunting barriers presented by clothes that layered them like geological eras. If you're thinking that the Victorian adulteress might have removed nothing except the most necessary garment, say one word: hoopskirt.