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 | | From: | Some Bastard | | Subject: | Re: SPEWS IP range 202.84.188.192-255 | | Date: | Wed, 4 Jan 2005 21:18:48 GMT |
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 | And there is nothing, nothing in all her attire, not the least ribbon, of whose relation to fashion she has not a definite conception and concerning which she is not immediately aware whether the lady who just passed by noticed it, because for whose benefit does she dress if not for other ladies!
Even in my shop where she comes to be fitted out a la mode, even there she is in fashion. Just as there is a special bathing costume and a special riding habit, likewise there is a particular kind of dress which it is the fashion to wear to the dressmaker's shop. That costume is not insouciant in the same sense as is the negligee a lady is pleased to be surprised in, earlier in the forenoon, where the point is her belonging to the fair and the coquetry lies in her letting herself be surprised. The dressmaker costume, on the other hand, is calculated to be nonchalant and a bit careless without her being embarrassed thereby, because a dressmaker stands in a different relation to her from a cavalier. The coquetry here consists in thus showing herself to a man who, by reason of his station, does not presume to ask for the lady's womanly recognition, but must be content with the perquisites which fall abundantly to his share, without her ever thinking of it, or without it even so much as entering her mind to play the lady before a dressmaker. The point is, therefore, that her being of the opposite is, in a certain sense, left out of consideration, and her coquetry invalidated, by the superciliousness of the noble lady who would smile
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