Although fashion is so important to women, the fact is that surprisingly few women understand its workings. Fashions develop, usually with logic, from human na­ture, from the lives people lead, their needs and desires, sometimes unconscious. A wise man once said that if he could have only one book from which to learn about any era in history, he would not choose a serious scientific study but a book of fashion plates. It is the costumes people wear, their hairdos, accessories and cosmetics that show what they were really like at any time in history.

It is generally agreed that women choose their hair styles and their clothes in order to look beautiful, but beauty in fashion is not absolute like beauty in nature. A rose that was beautiful a hundred years ago would still look beautiful today. Although standards in art are less positive than standards in nature, a Renoir painting that was beautiful in his time still looks beauti­ful to us. But the fashions of past periods which were considered lovely in their own day may look strange, quaint, or even grotesque to us. The lack of an absolute standard for fashions is proved by the fact that as fashions in hair styles and clothes change, women adopt or adapt each of them in turn and still always succeed in looking well. During World War II, long pageboys and upsweeps were the vogue. In 1947 the New Look introduced short, cap-shaped hairdos. Yet at both times, women looked attractive because they were in fashion. The styles in women's clothes followed a similar pattern.

1 Renoir's "By the Seashore," which is, if anything, more appealing to modern eyes than to those of the artist's contemporaries.
This leads us to the conclusion that a fashion is successful partly because we have become accustomed to looking at it. When designers or stylists try to change fashions too quickly, they meet resistance from some of the public who cannot adjust their standards abrupt­ly. They need time for their eyes to become accustomed to the new fashion.

The most enduring fashions do not arrive overnight. They evolve rather slowly and gradually, in answer to a need. An example of this is the current popular vogue for short free hairdos which suit the American woman of today who leads an active life, with a minimum of fuss and feathers.

FASHIONS   IN   BEAUTY

There are also changing conceptions of women's beauty. Every period has its own ideal of beautiful wom­anhood. Fashionable Greeks and Romans admired women with oval faces and figures that were much fuller than those we admire today. In our grandfathers' time, popular beauties looked like Lillian Russell. In the Twenties, the flat-chested, hipless figure was in vogue.
There are many reasons for changing fashions in beauty. Some we can figure out, others must remain obscure. In earlier periods of history, it was often a queen or a member of court circles who influenced fashion. Because Queen Elizabeth I had red hair (genuine or otherwise) her followers admired red hair. Later, fashions were set by social leaders, by stage stars and then movie stars.

2 In earlier days, members of royal and noble families helped set the fashions. Queen Elizabeth I (left) created a vogue for red hair; and Lady Skipwith (right), in Reynolds' portrait, wears one of the exaggerated  built-up  hairdos  of the   Eighteenth  Century.

Mary Pickford inspired a whole gen­eration of mothers to force corkscrew curls on their daughters. Greta Garbo popularized the long bob, Jean Harlow the platinum blonde craze. It is safe to say, however, that none of these women could have created the various vogues single-handed, unless the public was ready for each of them in turn. In Miss Pickford's time, the ideal was the little girl type. Later the worldlier Garbo and Harlow answered the public's need for a new standard to follow.

3 Stars of the stage and screen have influenced thousands of women to follow their hairstyles: (left to right) Mary Pickford, exponent of the corkscrew curl; Clara Bow, shingled "flapper" star of the Twenties; Jean Harlow, who inspired the platinum blonde  craze   of  the   next  decade.

4 A graphic illustration of changing concepts in physical beauty. Miss America of 1960 is. six inches taller and twelve pounds heavier than her counterpart of 1921, with a striking difference in other proportions as well.

We are again in the process of transition. A change in the ideal face is becoming noticeable. Instead of the classic oval, which because of its perfection actually lacks interest, the longer face is coming to the fore as the modern ideal. Interest is stimulated by its imper­fection, thereby attracting attention to one feature more than another. As we have discarded the proportions of Venus' body, we are now discarding the proportions of the classic Greek face.

At the same time we are gaining new concepts of physical beauty, drawn from all the quarters of the globe. As distances in the world have shrunk and travel has become more common, we have been given the opportunity to see and appreciate the women of many racial strains that were formerly remote to us. Women of other continents, though sometimes quite different from the women of the Western world, we now realize are lovely in their own way. This development, too, has helped to undermine our earlier ideal, replacing it with a variety of interesting facial contours more attrac­tive to modern eyes than the outmoded classical oval.

Detail from Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" showing an outmoded concept of feminine beauty.

1 Mitzi Gaynor's heart-shaped face expresses the liveliness that is her chief appeal.

BEAUTY TAKES MANY FORMS

These seven women are gen­erally considered beautiful— or at least highly attractive — yet most of them have "irregular" features in the classical sense. pictures 1  through 7

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