From A Country Scribe comes a post with a blurry picture:
I like that look, at least on a elderly gentleman. (Side note as we near Oktoberfest: Do old guys look better in the lederhosen & the Deutsch hats than young poseurs or is that rank age prejudice? Side note II: Did anyone else see this PBS special on European anti-Americanism and if so, what is wrong with Polish people wearing cowboy hats?) Anyway, it all reminds me of something from a novel I'm reading:
Okay, I was shooting from the hip and didn't get a good picture of this guy at the coffee shop because I didn't dare ask him if I could take his picture. Yellow shoes, mauve socks, white boxers, yellow shirt, plaid bow tie--and mauve jacket on a man who looked to be in his late eighties. Priceless.
"Never mind," I would answer, "perhaps when the common people set the fashions, men's clothes may recover their old rakishness. Grooms used to be more pleasantly dressed than gentlemen, because good form for gentlemen nowadays is simply to be scrupulously clean, correct, and inconspicuous...Not that the uniform of industrialism absolves the rest of us drab creatures from self-consciousness or from taking pains. We mustn't fall short of the right standard or overdo anything; but we compose our social figures sadly, with fear and trembling, and more in the dread of damnation than in the hope of glory.
"Not in my case," Mario said, smiling broadly and straightening his shoulders. "I rather fancy dressing up and giving people something to stare at."
"I know; but you're a rare exception, a professional ladykiller, a popinjay amid the millions of others. You have the courage of your full human nature, as your father had the courage of his delicate tastes..."
-- George Santayana, The Last Puritan
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