A SARTORIAL MORGUE

Evening Star, Issue 18980, 30 June 1925, Page 5

A SARTORIAL MORGUE

TAILOR CRITICS VISIT TO Till: ACADEMY BERNARD SHAW’S MYSTERY CLOAK. A representative of tho 1 Tailor and Cutter ’ has been to tho Royal Academy examining the specimcnts of sartorial art and has received a series of shock's. “ Tho Royal Academy," ho says, “is once more a theatre of despoiled and maltreated clothes. The dross slashers have been at work again, and a sad mess they have made of their victims’ raiment. As one wanders round the rooms the Academy appears to be a sartorial morgue. No good purpose is achieved by ignoring the lines and proportions of modern dollies. Art is not served by placing pockets in the wrong positions, stripping buttons off, and depleting a jacket as if it were a river in spate. Frequently one secs portraits with clearly-defined and detailed heads surmounting bodies so illmaterialised that they would disgrace a materialistic seance. Wo adviso those artists to rend their arts and not their garments.’’ A few individual criticisms are, appended: “ Thomas Hardy, O.M. —If anything would justify tho pessimistic view of life, surely it is such a coat and waistcoat ns the painter has given )o the, distinguished puet and novelist. Look at the awful right sleeve, almost large enough for a mandarin.

“ George Bernard Shaw. —IVhat is this over-garment that Bernard Shaw is wearing ? Is it a coal- or a cloak It uay be anything. It has no sleeves, and yet, appears to possess a culf, Tho artist lias perpetrated a masterly sartorial paradox. Like Shaw’s plays, it would seem to require a long .and elaborate introj lotion. But did even the brilliant dramatist wear such garb 1 The answer is to be toeinl in Pygmalion. “John VrCormaek. —This portrait _is a shrieking example of dothes-ca cophony with nothing but discords. Iho suit is Lm worst in the Academy. It is smutty and nebulous —a veritable nightmare. “ The Bight Hon. L. (J. Amcry, Ml’.--What is the use of being a Cabinet Minister if vou cannot have a reasonable sut of coat f One side of the right r/ n. gentleman's garment is without a cipcd. 1 eihaps Ihe art ist remembered that, his sitter is not'd ;,s' an economist. “The Marquc.-s of Bath. Neither rank nor honors keep a man immune tiom artists' clot lues carelessness, Tho Marquess of Bath will go down to posterity with a very bad collar to his coat. “' Lord Baniby,-—On this portrait the artist lias painted flickering shadows for clothes, but they do not come, and go; they remain as a reproach. •‘",15. A. Whittaker Ellis.--The gentleman is wearing a- coat, without lapels. I\ o are always willing lo learn, and wonder if a new style has sprung into being yithout, our knowledge. “Basil Molt, President^ of tho Institution of Civil Engineers. —It is enough to make a man extremely uncivil to be given such a suit. L is without form and void of anv attempt at copying actual clothes. “ If all those painters paint wnat they sec,” says the tailor critic, “ it must be said there is a terrible amount of astigmatism in exist cnee and a pressing need for the service of oculists.