The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1948 OF CLOTHES

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 October 1948, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1948 OF CLOTHES

f~'LOTHES are important not only because they keep out the weather from the human body, but also because they keep something inside a man and a woman. Polonius may have been an old windbag, but he gave some sound adviee to his son when he enjoined him thus: “Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, For the coat doth oft proclaim the man. ’ ’ Clothes today, especially for men, are so dear that hanging on to an old jacket has almost the virtue of a commandment. The day of the mass-made garment is here and yet, somehow the garments look sad. They have nd personality. It has been said that a Frenchman is made to fit his clothes whereas with an English-, man his clothes are made tc fit him. Has a Frenchman more personality or more individuality than the average well dressed Englishman? That should start a good argument in any Continental cafe? Whichever way such an argument is decided, certain it it that the next question to be discussed is whether the clothes make the man. To a very large extent they do: that is precisely the point made by old Polonius. Give a youngster a poorly cut jacket and he feels himself to be nobody. Is it surprising that he sometimes acts accordingly? The young man who has a good tailored suit on knows that he is proclaiming himself to be within a certain class and he respects himself and his class. The youngster, or the older man who is no class, also behaves in accordance with his appreciated position. Is that the reason why so much larrikinism is abroad today? Would better clothes support a greater measure of personality than the larrikin at present feels himself to possess? Is not larrikinism to a large extent the protest of inferiors against society at large? The average man, particularly the man who is now above middle age, looks back to a time when personal dignity was more in evidence than it is today. The jibe “Don’t be a stuffed shirt’’ hits no tender spot with those who knew the dignity of dinners when the guests customarily dressed for the occasion. With the donning of a dinner jacket the individual unconsciously slipped into a certain code of behaviour. The coat proclaimed the man and the wearer became the man proclaimed. To what extent, for instance, has the discontinuing of dressing for dinner been the contributing factor to the entry of the undesirable habit of smoking at the dining table which so frequently has to be tolerated nowadays? In the days of the black bow such conduct would have been impossible because it was unthinkable. The stuffed shirt attitude towards life was not a consciousness of the shirt-front, but the discipline necessary to protect the feelings of those who were behind the other shirt-fronts. Victorianism may have been a little too stiff in some respects, but its conventions were valuable discipline because their aim was to protect other people. The top hat may be scorned in this soft hat age, but is a soft hat a becoming headgear, for instance, for those people who will be presented to the King and Queen when they visit New Zealand? There is no virtue in casualness, and certainly no compliment in it either. Today nobody knows whether an occasion is formal or informal. When a ceremony is formal then there is the advantage that everyone knows how to dress and how to behave. To smack a clergyman on the back at a funeral is not a friendly gesture; it is an irreverent impertinence. If everyone is so casual that a clergyman in the conduct of his office is not to be distinguished from the bloke who has mooched into the ceremony then casualness will naturally result. A dignified office is supported by dignified clothing, hence the desirability of the robe for the clergyman and for the lawyer. It supports the man himself and it requires that his office shall be respected. Seeing that this is true in a professional sense why should it not be equally desirable in a personal sense? The individual who takes care of his clothes is paying a compliment to his own personality. It bespeaks his self-respect and self-respect is the foundation of all good personal behaviour: it is equally the foundation of all good social behaviour. All good things, however, can be overdone and he who shows an over-concern for clothes—and in this the male includes the female as the Acts Interpretation Act has it—advertises his own lack of stability. To be satisfied with the look of things is a shallow* philosophy, indeed. The golden rule concerning clothes is to be well enough dressed to be noticed, but not to be conspicuous. Restraint is the essential characteristic of good taste in all things from dancing to drinking and dress is not excluded. It is not a mere accident that the shallow people who populate Hollywood and who fall into and out of marriage with such abounding ease are so loudly dressed. It is not the necessities of the film life that makes them so, but their own feelings of inadequacy, which defeat they strive to overcome by stridency. The over-elaborate coiffure, the extreme of style in clothes and their colours, the red coloured fingernails and on occasion ,of toenails, too, would look very cheap before the steady gaze of, say, Queen Victoria, who could be trusted to observe that “we are not amused.” But who would be bold enough to say that Queen Victoria was the less desirable personality or the less effective one? Queen Victoria found a court that was by no means commendable. She cleaned it out and gave it pure air and she also gave the lead to a rising middle class which in turn dampened down the excesses of the Eighteenth Century aristocracy. The Victorian era, notwithstanding its being decried today, is rising in public estimation as easy ways turn to license and casualness turns to callousness. It was thought when the conventions started to be broken down that it would lead to a free-and-easy condition of life: it is turning out to be a condition that is both unfree and uneasy. It would be too much to ask of the tailor that he should start reforming society by giving clothes not a new look, but rather a dignified look. It would nevertheless be a valuable contribution along the road to self-restraint and in these days smallest contributions towards a more desirable social atmosphere should be thankfully received.