SOURCE: Kaplan, Joel H., and Shelia Stowell. “The Glass of Fashion.” In Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes, pp. 8-33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

In the following excerpt, Kaplan and Stowell consider the influence of the London theater on fashion, focusing their analysis on the use of costumes in Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.

On 25 February 1892, the Lady, a gentlewoman's magazine that had begun publication some seven years earlier, introduced a column dealing with “Dress on the London Stage.” In a brief preamble, Thespis, the column's pseudonymous author, set out its rationale. Hitherto, we are told, London fashion was fed by the couture houses of Paris, especially the great Maison Worth. Now, however, even the most casual observer might note “another source from which costumiers and others interested in dress draw largely—namely, the London stage.” In a handful of West End theatres, especially in plays...