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| Honoré Daumier Advantages of the crinoline for deceiving toll inspectors 1857 lithograph Minneapolis Institute of Arts |
"This year," said Tristouse, "fashions are bizarre and common, simple and full of fantasy. Any material from nature's domain may now be introduced into the composition of women's clothes. I saw a charming dress made of corks. . . . A major designer is thinking about launching tailor-made outfits made of old bookbindings done in calf. . . . Fish bones are being worn a lot on hats. One often sees delicious young girls dressed like pilgrims of Saint James of Compostella; their outfits, as is fitting, are studded with coquilles Saint-Jacques. Steel, wood, sandstone, and files have suddenly entered the vestimentary arts. . . . Feathers now decorate not only hats but shoes and gloves; and next year they'll be on umbrellas. They're doing shoes in Venetian glass and hats in Baccarat crystal. . . . I forgot to tell you that last Wednesday, I saw on the boulevards an old dowager dressed in mirrors stuck to fabric. The effect was sumptuous in the sunlight. You'd have thought it was a gold mine out for a walk. Later it started raining and the lady looked like a silver mine. . . . Fashion is becoming practical and no longer looks down on anything. It ennobles everything. It does for materials what the Romantics did for words."
– Guillaume Apollinaire, from Le poète assassiné (1916), translated as The Poet Assassinated and Other Stories by Ron Padgett (1984)