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For that matter, everybody knew everybody else's family
horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a mile down
the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or to a
reception, or coming home from office or store to noon dinner or
evening supper.
During the earlier years of this period, elegance of personal
appearance was believed to rest more upon the texture of garments than
upon their shaping. A silk dress needed no remodelling when it was a
year or so old; it remained distinguished by merely remaining silk.
Old men and governors wore broadcloth; "full dress" was broadcloth
with "doeskin" trousers; and there were seen men of all ages to whom a
hat meant only that rigid, tall silk thing known to impudence as a
"stove-pipe." In town and country these men would wear no other hat,
and, without self-consciousness, they went rowing in such hats.
Shifting fashions of shape replaced aristocracy of texture:
dressmakers, shoemakers, hatmakers, and tailors, increasing in cunning
and in power, found means to make new clothes old.


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