DIPLOMATS AND DANDIES.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1735, 5 September 1919, Page 5

DIPLOMATS AND DANDIES.

DO DUDS MAKE THE MAN? SARTORIAL SIDELIGHTS ON PARIS. ONLOOKERS DISAPPOINTED. IThU is a little meditation by William G. Shepherd in the N.V. "Evening Poet." Scciclocists may find feed for reflection in the faet that the only sticklers fcr Eprtorial etiquette were the Japanese and South Americans.] Rig folks are exactly like us ordinrry little folks in one thing at least; they tlo about as they want to <lo. They drink when they're thirsty, eat when they're hungry, sit the way they please or stand in their own favourite positions; they smile at funny things and they look dumpy and blue when things go wrong. I've seen so much of the world's big men these past months in Paris that I've begun to wonder what makes them big. When you see them often enough they begin to look extraordinarily like the rest of us. "What turn of fortune's wheels have brought these C 5 men here to sit at this table and represent their peoples in this world's conference? How would you like to have the real life story of every one of these men, from Wilson down to Emir Feisal?" said a prominent American publisher to a friend as they stood among the reporters in the Clock Hall during a plenary session. "Fine!" exclaimed his friend. '"How I Got to the Peace Conference.' Wouldn't that be a fine title for the scries?"

Now, with the Peace Conference crowd ready to go home as soon as possible, one may analyse them without running the risk of being called disrespectful. During the many days that I saw most of the great leaders near at hand, talked with many of them, at various times, and saw all-of them in operation and in various moods, I made certain observations about them.

Bald, But Moustached. Forty-five of them were more or less bald, but what they lacked in head-covering they made up in moustaches, as 51 of them were thus adorned.. Whiskers were not the vogue at the Peace table. Vassitch of Serbia wore his whiskers extremely long and bushy. Extraordinarily enough,, the only other notable whiskers at the Peace table were those of Vandervelde of Belgium and Venizelos of Greece. There were no other men at the table whose names began with the letter V. The Vassitch whiskers, however, were "W" shaped. The high-winged collar is undoubtedly the statesman's favourite. President Wilson, who does not fall within either the bald or the whiskered category, being smooth-shaven like the Japanese delegates, wore the high-band turned-down collar, and, more or less, from the collar standpoint, was in a class by himself. Secretary Lansing follows Wilson's choice as to .collars. Henry White, who. through his years of Ambassadorial experience, has learned adaptability, affected various collars as occasion dictated.

Speaking of collars, however, the pr.lm was carried off by the enemy. Count Brockdorff-Ranlzau appeared at the Trianon Palace Hotel on "medicine day" with a collar at least three inches high, decorated in front with tiny, narrow wings. During the session he constantly raised his chin and rubhed his neck against the rim of his collar, as if it were, binding him. Button shoes and lace shoes ran about fifty-fifty. The statesmen ran more or less to patent-leather shoes, even in their street clothes.

There was a surprisingly little amount of formal dressing. President Wilson was not far behind in the carefulness with which he attired himself for various occasions. The Japanese and some of the South American delegates were'practically the only members who were sticklers for form in dress. The English made it the fasion to be careless in dress.

British Discard Top-Hats,

It was some of the Britishers who first appeared in what hitherto has been considered an impossible combination—a Derby hat and a cutaway frock coat. Others followed suit, and one warm spring day Secretary Lansing appeared on the Rue Rivoli, with Mrs Lansing, wearing his bowler and a very neat cutaway frock. After that the American secretaries did likewise, thus setting a fashion that Washingtonians at least may be copying even now.

President Wilson never wears a Derby hat. When he wore his frock coat he always called for his silk hat. Colonel House, however, sided with Secretary Lansing in this particular matter.

It may be of interest to know to what purpose Secretary Lansing often put the tail pockets of his cutaway. In the Hotel Crillon lobby there was a branch of the American Army Commissary, where cigars, cigarettes and chocolate, all scarce in Paris shops, might be purchased at home prices. Secretary Lansing often, as he hurried out of the hotel, would turn to this stand, purchase a 10-ccnt cake of chocolate, larded with almonds, and, as he thrust it into his coat tails, would afford a picture which, for advertising purposes, would have been worth thousands of dollars to the chocolate maker. French Stick to Long Coats. White edges along the vest opening are very proper form among statesmen, it would appear. T, n ' s applies even in everyday street clothes, which, by the way, were invariably dark. The English and the Americans were those who seemed gladdest of the opportunity to get into the short-coated business suits. The French delegates never appeared in short coats. When the Japanese wore short coats they were likely to wear, with them, trousers of a lightcoloured material.

in the cold spring wealhcr spr.ts had a great vogue, though the elder statesmen, like Lloyd George and Wilson and Clemericeau, did not wear them. There is undouhtcdly a snappiness about the American business suit that none of the other tailors of the world has been able to attain. American suits, as viewed at the Peace • Conference, seemed to be made to Jit "their particular wearers. At a great distance, in a Paris street, one may single out an American suit. The sound old British suit is made

to drape and hang; it keeps one warm and covered and it is wide-necked, so that a man, if he will, may draw his head down into it like a turtle going into its shell. The French business suit is made in one certain way, with racy lines and a tight waist. It is unchangeable. l,t does not fit you; you must fit it. In their American business suits the American 'delegates upheld proudly the sartorial dignity of the United States. In the more formal dress their evening clothes bore a trim tautness that was distinctly American, but in their afternoon garb, speaking from the standpoint of trimness and ease of bearing, tVy were outshone by the British and the French. Your European finds his frock coat a thing for almost everyday wear, while our American statesmen seem to carry them uneasily. "Lunching Their Way Through."

In the matter of silk hats the American colony members of Paris, who are considered the best dressed men in France, had cause to criticise the American delegation. It would appear that every year in the United States the silk hat takes a new form, while it remains unchanged throughout the decades in Europe. President, Wilson, Col. House, Mr White, and Mr Lansing all seemed unaware of this fact. Their hats were not alike. They were of various models, ranging through some 10 years of changes. When thev were not grouped together in their silk hats the effect was not so alarming. Any one of them looked different only from the European statesmen about him. But when they collected together thus attired and looked different from each other, it was a matter for comment. On the whole, the Paris Peace Conference was not a great sartorial success. About the only new note struck was the combination of the derby and the frock coat. It was no mincing, dancing lot of statesmen that came here. Indeed not. But it was an eating lot. Not a day went by in Peace Conference circles that there were not luncheons galore. "The statesmen danced their way through the Vienna conference," said Ferrcro, the Italian historian, to a lady who sat at his right at a formal luncheon. "They are lunching their way through this one."