English Etiquette and Absurd Fads

“The Burdens of Fashion.” What we MUST come to before long! — “The fashionable coiffure is hideous— nay, revolting—and I'm sorry to say, it is affected by about eight in ten English women. It is simply a return to the most extreme style of the old chignon— an immense wad of hair, or imitation of one, stuck straight out from the back of the head. In its extreme development it is often fully as large as the head which it disfigures. Sometimes you see a woman who aims to be ultra-fashionable wearing two of these monstrosities, one atop of the other, and maybe a little sailor hat perched atop of the wad, but not covering her head at all.”

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Two Absurd English Fads

“There are two fashions very largely, almost, universally, affected by English women just now that I don't think will be copied over here even by the most pronounced faddist.” remarked a woman just back from a long stay in England. They are the chignon and the walking cane. “The fashionable coiffure is hideous— nay, revolting—and I'm sorry to say, it is affected by about eight in ten English women. It is simply a return to the most extreme style of the old chignon— an immense wad of hair, or imitation of one, stuck straight out from the back of the head. In its extreme development it is often fully as large as the head which it disfigures. Sometimes you see a woman who aims to be ultra-fashionable wearing two of these monstrosities, one atop of the other, and maybe a little sailor hat perched atop of the wad, but not covering her head at all. The only improvement over the old chignon is that the present one is a hair covered wire frame instead of a swab of hair. The vulgar people call it a ‘bun.’ 

In a trip around the continent I didn't see a single ‘bun’ except on traveling English women. It is purely English and likely to remain so. “The inevitable accompaniment of the chignon is the walking cane, and it was to me the oddest thing in the world when I arrived in England in the spring to see every woman walking with a regular man’s cane. The heavy fashionables carry heavy canes, just as our ‘Chollies’ do. I traveled all round England, to all the big towns and the fashionable watering places, and everywhere the cane was most conspicuous. “But there’s a reason for the cane, and, absurd as it is, it is a point for the cane above the chignon, for the latter is without any excuse whatever. Queen Victoria is compelled to use a walking cane whenever she moves about, and it is in compliment to her majesty—or from a silly aping of royalty, whichever you like—that the Euglish woman carries a cane. You remember, of course, the ‘Alexandra limp,’ which nearly every English woman affected so years ago and which had its origin in a lameness of the Princess of Wales. It is in just such ways that many of the fashionable absurdities of Europe originate. But heaven forfend us from the chignon and the cane.” — Editor Woman's Page, Boston Globe, 1895

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia