All my life I’ve enjoyed poring over old photographs of Mum and Dad back in their salad days. Like Fr Brendan, I’m too inexpert to editorialise about women’s fashions but I do know these two things are true: women are still expected to make an effort and, second, the modest dresses ladies wore in the rationing-afflicted 1940s were more flattering than the creations most women will ‘wear’ to the 2023 Melbourne Cup. As for the men, the less said the better. Only a few have a clue – unlike even working class men of yore. My favourite era in the old photo albums, style-wise, was the 1940s and 50s. Mum made her own dresses then but looks like a star.
Star Trekisation doesn’t help, aesthetically. Millions are now forced to wear hi-viz – whether or not they’re realistically in danger of being squished by a pantech – or crummy uniforms consisting of a company logo stamped on a Chinese-made polo shirt. Beauty and mystique are becoming luxuries for an un-vizzed beau monde that – unlike young Mum and her friends – has cultivated too little of either to draw from when it actually matters. There’s an ancient saying in theology: ‘Lex orandi, lex credendi.’ The way we worship is what we believe and who we are. ‘Clothes make the man’ – vestis virum facit – is a cousin to the axiom no more than once removed.
Well said.
I recently saw a bit of online publicity from the State Library of South Australia, contrasting library users then and now. The ‘then’ image was a 1950s publicity photo showing two young women, immaculately groomed, coiffed and dressed, clean-skinned, trim-figured. The ‘now’ photo was a purple-haired, tattooed, pierced walrus of indecipherable gender, wearing something like a tent and leering at the camera with an expression of utter vacuity. Naturally, the people who put this up thought it was a positive development.
A writer who I have little time for nevertheless said a very true thing when she returned to Australia after some years in Paris and asked, why do Australian men dress like children?
cuckoo says:
28 October, 2023 at 7:22 am
A writer who I have little time for nevertheless said a very true thing when she returned to Australia after some years in Paris and asked, why do Australian men dress like children?
Because a three-piece suit with waistcoat and tie may be perfect for the climes of gay Paree’ but does not quite work when you are trying to build something in 35+ degrees in Oz and then live in that climate. The Parisian suit wearers may have all the time to swan around not working so they can try and impress the ladies (other men more like it). We prefer to dress practically for work and when we are not working, to dress practically for the climate.
As an adult I will dress how I please depending on the need. The only time I need a suit is possibly for a wedding or a funeral.
The only person I feel any need to impress or please is my wife and we both dress appropriately for our climate while looking ‘nice’.
I hope our fashionistas will not get the vapours over this. I don’t have a cravat or morning suit to wear.
Memo to the Israelis: Make sure you dress nicely before some Hamas scum tries to kill you.
First world effing problems while our economy and society goes down the toilet. Oz was always quite egalitarian. I suppose dressing better will show the plebs who their betters are.
A suit indicates to me that you may well be an unproductive member of society that sits in a nice office all day trying to screw up the lives of real working people. Exhibit 1: Politicians.
There was an article the other day about young men and their going out uniform,blue blazer,white shirt and light pants.
No need to iron just wear it everywhere,work,weddings races etc.
I used to seethe at young guys picking up our daughters who were dressed up.Guys unshaven in their mid teens erk horrible,grotty tee shirt probably unwashed and some form of jeans.No effort made or apparently needed.
I’m 100% in support of learning from the past, and trying to recapture some of the lost elegance. All these men have something in common: Alexander of Macedon riding into battle; Julius Caesar marching across the Rubicon; Napoleon Bonaparte entering Berlin; Sir Isaac Newton holding an apple; any of the great Celtic Clan Chiefs; Samuel Pepys; George Washington standing on a boat above the Delaware River.
Did you guess the secret to their manly greatness? That’s right, knee length legware.
This decision has already been made … arguably by God or perhaps by Darwin but either way … what you notice is that halfway down your leg sits a convenient marker to tell you the scientifically and historically proven, correct length of whatever you are wearing. Any shorter, or any longer is wrong.
Whether you prefer cargo pants, bike shorts, lederhosen, a traditional kilt, cutoff sweat pants with threads dangling (for that lovable ragamuffin look) or even if you want to dress like a Roman gladiator … in every situation, the right length for men to wear is knee length.
LOL. An interesting rebuttal, Tel.
However, I think those greats were tucking their trousers into their boots or wearing stockings, weren’t they?
Fallacy of false equivalency, Perp. Fr Brendan stipulates that labourers are entitled to wear appropriate clothes for work. That said, I have a photograph of my grandfather and his fellow miners at a north Queensland site in the early 20th. None are wearing shorts – which were, of course, undies at that time.
https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/portrait-of-george-washington-joes-perovani.jpg
No, the trousers weren’t tucked into the boots.
I believe the detail is more obvious in this one.
https://cdn2.oceansbridge.com/2018/05/17100645/George-Washington-1732-1799-Charles-Willson-Peale-Oil-Painting.jpg
Admittedly, artistic license might be at work here.
Interesting article with several museum samples of men’s pants here.
Certainly true that elegance is rare.
Gone like the scent of the carnation. It’s a pity.
“The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever”
Father B doesn’t like shorts. I married a farm boy, who has never worn a pair of jeans, shorts only. Summer/winter. Good legs.
At a recent funeral, the only man in a suit.
at 7.56am
Trying to build something in 35+degrees “dressed in a 3-piece suit and tie”?
What men, exactly? What decade?
Men can look almost beautiful in a suit.
Appreciate elegance.
A bit like the women (and men) one sees in the looting videos from America.
For disadvantaged people, they’ve been grazing in very lush paddocks.
I have given long and careful thought to appropriate business attire for the tropics that can be readily adapted to the field, and no, it isn’t a safari suit.
The shirt collar would be more Georgian in concept to stop the red neck, the shirt blousy, a cravat to wick the sweat and look elegant when dressed up, and a light vest rather than a suit coat for winter evenings. I have dwelled long and hard on the trousers, pondering the length issue as per Tel above, but at the end of the day as RMWs are of course a compulsory component to ease popping on and off the wide colonial verandas of my other design ambitions, the pants will have to be full length.
You know who still wears safari suit jackets?
Shin bet bodyguards.
Excellent thread.
Like Catallaxy, but better dressed.
Back in the early 1970’s I came down from the bush to find work and study in my chosen field and while I was waiting I got a job on a construction site in Exhibition Street as a ‘brickies labourer’. 12 floor open air scaffolding!
They were putting a brick facade on the outside of the building.
I was struck by the fact that all the brick layers, who were mostly older immigrant Italians, always wore a suit and tie to and from work and carried their ‘smokos’ and lunches in a brief case.
They were good people and helped this dumb boy from the bush learn the ropes and dodge the union organizer that regularly came around collecting ‘dues’.
High standards for those Italians, NFA!
👏