THE FROCK COAT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 108, 7 April 1936, Page 12

THE FROCK COAT

“DEAD AS THE DODO.” The frock" coat is as dead as the proverbial Dodo —killed by .the King’s decision to banish it from the backs of household officials. A few survivors from the Victorian epoch may indeed continue to wear it on State occasions, but as a recognised form of regalia it will soon be forgotten, like other instruments of torture (says a Londoner). As an old,lady rennfrked the other day: “My dear, 1 am delighted that the King has been so sensible. Nowadays men have to travel on ’buses whatever their income. Can you imagine the tiresome job of getting out of a ’bus with everyone sitting on your frock coat? Dress in years gone l>3' meant rank—it stamped you. To-day anything beyond neatness means that a man has nothing else to do. Men have ceased to be. peacocks.” And so they have, though whether they have improved their prospects is open to question. The traditional palace rule was that all gentlemen-in-waiting should wear j a frock coat when in the presence of 1 the Sovereign. Queen Victoria, King Edward and even King George were 1 terribly strict about it. Out the new I King 'is not only of another genera-! tion, but he is in the vanguard of that* generation. He is a modern of the moderns. What was good enough for the people of yesterday is not necessarily good enough for him. Hence his decree that the out-moded frock

coat shall give place to the smart and elegant morning coat, or cutaway, and hence, too, the relief of politicians who will no longer be obliged to patronise a certain Covent Garden firm which hires out clothes for formal occasions. Lord Salisbury, who visited the Dominions with the Empire Parliamerit ary Delegation, is now almost the only well-known public man who 1 “sticks” to the frock coat. He always wears it in the House _ of Lords and at ceremonial functions. For in that he follows a confirmed family habit. It is on record that a Foreign Office messenger.being sent jto Hatfield, the family “seat,” to 1 deliver a letter into the, hands of the present Lord’s father, found him . shooting rabits—in a frock coat. I It is a matter of sartorial interest ; that the cut of the frock coat has scarcely altered sinee the sixties, when every male person who was anybody at all adopted it as a symbol of respectability—that is to say, of superiority.