I caught my husband perusing a menswear catalogue. I don’t know where he got it. It can’t have been sent to him. It was the kind that leans towards nightshirts and Barathea blazers. The language used was extraordinary. The ‘striking set of gentleman’s pure silk-club ties’ — ones with thin stripes — would be, it assured the purchaser, ‘sure to receive the nod from the doorman’. If by chance it matched the real tie of the club in question, perhaps more than a nod.
Can men really think they’ll be taken for clubmen and gents by sending a cheque for £30? The market envisaged has clearly been around a bit: The Waist-Eze corduroy trousers possess ‘discreet elastic insets in the waistband and “give” for driving or sitting’. Yet the buyer is imagined to possess a social insecurity of an alarming size.
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