One has been made aware of a rather distressing trend amongst the commonalty, something they refer to with the offensively cheerful term “visible mending.” It seems that instead of properly and discreetly incinerating a garment that has suffered a tear, people are now… celebrating the flaw. They are stitching garish, brightly-colored patches onto their clothes to announce to the world, ‘Look at me! My trousers have failed!’
It is a festival of decay. A parade of pathetic imperfection.
Last evening, one observed a photograph of a so-called “actress” at a film premiere. She was wearing what I can only describe as a piece of translucent cheesecloth that someone had sneezed onto, a monstrosity the press referred to as a “naked dress.” There was more skin on display than at a Victorian anatomy lecture. This is what passes for glamour today: looking as though you have just lost a fight with a roll of cellophane.
This is the logical endpoint of a society that has abandoned structure. A woman’s purpose, sartorially speaking, is to serve as a glorious, mobile scaffold for as much fabric, whalebone, and petticoatery as her constitution can bear. A proper gown should weigh no less than a small anvil and require the assistance of at least two maids and a pulley system to don. Its purpose is to project majesty, to conceal the frailties of the human form beneath a fortress of silk and steel. A woman should not be “comfortable”; she should be magnificent. Three hundred pounds of glorious, restrictive clothing is not a burden; it is a privilege.
And the men! Strolling about in their flimsy “T-shirts” and “jeans,” garments suitable only for coal miners and insurrectionists. A man is not fully dressed unless he is wearing a three-piece suit. This is not open to debate. The waistcoat provides necessary core support and a barrier against uncouth drafts. The jacket offers a formidable silhouette. The tie serves as a constant, gentle reminder of the suffocating strictures of civilized society.
A man should wear a three-piece suit to the office, to the theatre, to a picnic, and to bed. The notion of a man disrobing completely for slumber is, frankly, grotesque. The male form is a utilitarian, unfinished thing, and it should be kept under wraps at all costs, lest it frighten the horses.
This new trend of “mending” and “comfort” is a disease of the spirit. It is an admission of defeat. Take your sad little patch and your flimsy fabrics and dispose of them. True elegance is found in weight, in structure, in the quiet, dignified suffering that comes from being properly and immovably dressed.
