“CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN”…..or do they?
Some years ago (more likely, decades) I came across a book of photographic portraits, very traditional in style, of patrician gentlemen in their inner sancta, posed in the manner of corporate, professional or political portraiture, in board rooms, law chambers, oak paneled offices and medical libraries. To the man, handsomely dressed, meticulously shorn and shaved and posed in a manner that displayed their prominence and social position. Think of the iconic Life Magazine covers of Churchill, Roosevelt or George Bernard Shaw, only less close up, showing more background, to signal the importance of the subject’s status.
What made these otherwise quite standard businessmen’s portraits extraordinary was betrayed by the captions under each picture. The photographer had found his subject not on Wall Street or Park Avenue but on New York’s Bowery. For those who may not know, the Bowery was for most of the last century the repository of the homeless derelicts of the city, the place of last resort for the irredeemably fallen, end-stage alcoholics, a place of flop-houses, saw-dust barrooms and reeking soup kitchens. He had chosen from among the most abject, cleaned them up, dressed them, posed them in environments absolutely inimical to them and photographed them to our utter astonishment. Even after learning that we had been duped, it was hard to imagine these subjects in any but the habit or habitat shown.
I am musing on the effect of appearances but the thin line between us, the privileged, and the abject and unfortunate is also not lost in this example….but back to appearances. In these photos, clothes certainly appear to make the man. Imagine, however, these “gentlemen of leisure” standing up from behind the desk, starting to move or speak, would the finely tailored suit and pristine linen continue to conceal his true state. I think not. It is grace and bearing and personal taste that signal the gentleman, not a suit of clothes or fine shoes.
As a reverse example to the strange exercise mentioned above, I have known many gentlemen who’s dress was questionable in every detail, suits that bagged or hung limply on their frames, ancient shoes, serviceable but, frankly, derelict, and, in every facet, their dress was far from the fashions of the day, and yet they appeared, somehow, miraculously, beautifully turned out. No individual item of clothing supported this wonderful appearance but the whole was incontestably fine. It was the man making the clothes.
None of this is to say that there is not pleasure and beauty in a fine suit of clothes or masterfully sculpted pair of shoes, but to depend upon them for anything more than to elevate your mood, is to be disappointed. You are the thing itself, not your accoutrements. Your cultivation and authenticity will win the day, the rest is little more than a disguise, little more than signature badges of rank, a “uniform”, that cue others of your ilk that you have once inhabited the same sancta sanctorum.
If you agree with this thinking, you are probably someone like me who values the inherited item of clothes over today’s store-bought novelty. If you are fortunate enough to have an ancestor who has handed down some priceless and patinaed treasure, something trailing clouds of history -and one that actually fits you too- count yourself lucky. That scarf, that hat, that jacket, those shoes cannot be improved upon; count yourself blessed. For the rest of us, fortunately, there are shops or websites not unlike mine, where the good and the great of other eras are waiting to be discovered and, indeed, sported proudly, once again..