Ugly and indecent

With regard to women’s clothes one should not even talk. They have always been either ugly or indecent, and most often ugly and indecent at the same time. Western dress continuously changes and is determined by so-called fashion, and what results? Somewhere (mostly in Paris) a well-known circle of people change the style of dress or hairdo according to their whims while the rest of the French and, after them, other nations hurry to adopt the change no matter how ridiculous it may be, not even daring to doubt its beauty. Consider impartially the reasons for this aping, and you will be convinced that it springs from spiritual bondage to the pseudo-superior, and wherever bondage is involved there the heart loses its purity and nobility. National dress is the free custom of the people. Its alteration for the sake of comfort may in a sense show a certain freedom, and even the reasonableness of man (for custom itself is created in this manner), but imitation of Western dress is nothing but recognition of bondage to the taste of a pseudo-superior society. Let those who like such an admission be given the respect which they deserve, the respect which man shows for an ape.
Alexey Khomiakov