Fashion

Prancing around like jail-house sissies, today's young men baffle me. Do they not realize that - in prison culture, at least - wearing one's belt sub-buttocks exposing the underpants is an invitation to sodomy?

I was reminded of the vagaries of men's fashion by this passage from a book I'm reading about the Battle of Trafalgar.

In response to this need for courtesy and delicacy, wide swathes of English 18th century life became fragile and dainty, in a way that no age in England, before or since, has managed. It became possible, for the first and only time, for a perfectly serious man to attend ceremonies at court in 'a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver or of white silk work worked in the tambour, partridge silk stockings , gold buckles, ruffles and lace frill.'

Partridge silk stockings and lace frills? I bet they'd go down a treat in the iron-bar motel. Watch for them in the Hollister and Abercrombie summer collections.



Quotation from "Seize the Fire. Heroism, Duty, and the Battle of Trafalgar" by Adam Nicolson.