The Rules of the household 1876 style cont.....

The following was actually published in 1876

   The dress code

Men's clothing the clothing of a men is more expensive then that of a women. the woollen cloth used in their dress will become rusty and shabby in a very short time unless the best quality is not purchased. A good wife will always understand this.  A women, however expensively dressed looks shabby at once if her husband is forced to wear a threadbare coat.

Women's clothing printed washing cottons are an invention of modern times. At the beginning of the present century a cotton dress was an article of luxury, which lost all it's beauty by washing. nothing however, looks more fresh, dainty or seasonable than a clean muslin or marcella dress of delicate pattern; and they possess this advantage, that weather cannot injure them. Good qualities keep clean longer then cheap ones, and thus allow saving in washing.

    In most parts of Europe women dress in a manner suitable to their work and class, and their costume is very often pretty and picturesque. In England this custom is unpopular. The dress of a peasant in Scotland is of a better material, and is more comfortable and pretty than that of an English woman of the same rank. There is something honest about the short woollen skirt, the clean frilled cap, and the plaid that passes over the head and forms the out-door costume of the Scotch peasant woman, with which the long draggled gown, the flimsy shawl, and the bonnet with its miserable remnants of flowers or feathers, so often seen in England, would compare very unfavourably. The head covering, especially of the poorer women in the large towns of England and Ireland, has become an object of ridicule. In France, even in the capital, which rules the rest of the continent in the matter of dress the poorest women are seen at church or at the market inn dainty white caps with frilled borders; while the younger women, by a certain careless arrangement of a handkerchief with a point falling from the forehead, make for themselves a headdress which for simple elegance and grace, is not surpassed by the most costly constructions worn by the rich.

Jewellery is intended for ornament only; the brooch for fastening the collar is only article of the kind that is of a real use; and it should correspond with the rest of the dress. Jewellery is suitable as ornament only for the middle age or elderly; and much of it on, anyone only for out of doors is in bad taste.  Earrings though worn, are relics of barbarism, to which we are reconciled only by custom. The idea of piercing the living flesh, in order to insert an ornament, is most repulsive.

 Quantity of underclothing each member of a household should possess a set of underclothing; that is, a certain number of each garment in constant wear. This number need not be very large; one article is more likely to be lost from a large set than from a small one, and a large set, worn evenly, is likely to go to pieces all at once. Repair to the underclothing should be mended as often as necessary, and in such a way as to look as little patched as possible. Thus when a shirt is out at the elbows, it is better to half sleeve it  than to piece over the holes, and the substitution of half a breadth in a dress is better than darning or patching a part which has been injured by accident.

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