In such hands, even "featherses" become a fine art, not a matter of vanity.
Are women so much more vain than men? No doubt they talk more about their
dress, for there is much more to talk about; yet did you never hear the men
of fashion discuss boots and hats and the liveries of grooms? A good friend
of mine, a shoemaker, who supplies very high heels for a great many pretty
feet on Fifth Avenue in New York, declares that women are not so vain in
that direction as men. "A man who thinks he has a handsome foot," quoth our
fashionable Crispin, "is apt to give us more trouble than any lady among
our customers. I have noticed this for twenty years." The testimony is
consoling--to women.

And this naturally suggests the question, What is to be the future of
masculine costume? Is the present formlessness and gracelessness and
monotony of hue to last forever, as suited to the rough needs of a workaday
world? It is to be remembered that the difference in this respect between
the dress of the sexes is a very recent thing. Till within a century or so,
men dressed as picturesquely as women, and paid as minute attention to
their costume. Even the fashions in armor varied as extensively as the
fashions in gowns. One of Henry III.'s courtiers, Sir J. Arundel, had
fifty-two complete suits of cloth of gold. No satin, no velvet, was too
elegant for those who sat to Copley for their pictures. In Puritan days the
laws could hardly be made severe enough to prevent men from wearing
silver-lace and "broad bone-lace," and shoulder-bands of undue width, and
double ruffs and "immoderate great breeches." What seemed to the Cavaliers
the extreme of stupid sobriety in dress would pass now for the most
fantastic array. Fancy Samuel Pepys going to a wedding of to-day in his
"new colored silk suit and coat trimmed with gold buttons, and gold broad
lace round his hands, very rich and fine." It would give to the ceremony
the aspect of a fancy ball; yet how much prettier a sight is a fancy ball
than the ordinary entertainment of the period!