1893’s Etiquette Fads and Fashions

One popular girl, or popular family, can cause a raging fashion for an entire season and beyond. – Eloise Bridgerton in opera gloves.– Photo source, Pinterest

It is a caprice of the moment with a certain set of girls who strive for fads and eccentricities to omit all punctuation marks in their letters. Probably some one who couldn’t put them in, started the fashion. Just as a girl at the operá a few years ago, found that a sore finger throbbed and ached desperately if her hand lay on her lap, and was much relieved when she held it upright. So she sat all the evening in a conspicuous box, with one slender gloved-hand touching her cheek – with the result of making the attitude a marked and raging fashion that entire season.

It is a suggestion to slip a salted almond into the vacuum left by a date or French prune stone and try the surprise.

English tennis cakes are offered at the house tennis parties of the season. They are a good sized loaf cake, tasting like a pound cake, with a little fruit. A New-York caterer introduced them and still monopolizes the custom in them.

Up to a year or so ago, doilies were used in moderation for finger bowls and occasional small dishes. Then they suddenly became fashionable for nearly every separate bit of china. The table was dotted with them until it looked like the counter of a linen store. They were used to set the cup upon in one’s saucer– certainly the silliest and the furthest from neat of all napery whims. Now the reaction has set in. It is no longer form to employ doilies, save in the occasional manner of a twelvemonth.

A late Parisian novelty– Bats in diamonds are bizarre enough to attract the attention of those seeking after new and strange effects. Old jewels can be reset and rearranged in these bats, which are described as setting off to striking advantage a ball costume.

Linen collars and cuffs are again in high favor, but worn with a difference. The cuffs are no longer a mere strip of white below the sleeve, but protrude for an inch or two, like a man's wristbands. This would seem another saucy attempt to seize upon the masculine belongings. –“Her Point of View”, NYT, 1893

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