When I was in my early thirties I packed in my job with the Irish Press and spent the small pension pot I’d accumulated, mostly on an extended stay in Vietnam, but also on a tailored suit. The charcoal wool suit was so hard-wearing I only threw out the jacket recently and can still wear the pants. It cost quite a bit but gave me a lot of pleasure so that, even now, I think it was one of my better financial investments.
I didn’t bring the suit with me to Vietnam but did bring a copy of Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, thinking, as many young people do, that I might learn about how life should be lived by reading what others had to say on the topic. There was lot in the book about western philosophy, the Jewish and Christian traditions, etc, but – if memory serves – clothes got a mention when a French intellectual was quoted as saying one way of confronting life’s lack of meaning was to dress well. I have since grown to be wary of propositions from French intellectuals but the idea that clothes can serve as an expression of existential defiance is one I still think passes muster.
Vietnam was a very poor country in the early 1990s, but the people’s sartorial style was in the catwalk league. The men wore loose pants and untailored shirts that sat on them like models hired by Comme des Garçons. It was commonplace to see straight-backed women cycling down country lanes wearing an ao dai – a long, short-sleeved tunic with slits up the sides and matching wide pants – conical straw hats on their heads, long white gloves covering their bare arms. They might have been earning a dollar a day, but they looked a million dollars.
Before giving up my job I’d spent my first paid summer holidays in Kenya. Later again I took a year’s sabbatical to attend a journalism programme in Paris. A few years after I came back from Vietnam, a Kenyan journalist visiting Ireland stayed in my Dublin flat. She was on the programme in Paris and was in Ireland to do some news reporting. She was interested in clothes and liked to dress well. In Dublin she wore jacket and skirt suits, decorated with piping. She looked great despite, or perhaps because, her outfits were notably more formal than the everyday attire worn by most people in Ireland.
Dictionary on the Double – Frank McNally on the enduring literary life of Patrick Dinneen
‘This wonderful horse seems to have been as remarkable in death as in life’ – Frank McNally on an unbeatable stallion
‘Ireland, more than other countries, ought to be a country of trees’
‘The whole position in Europe is one of uncertainty and of menace’ – John Mulqueen on Éamon de Valera’s foreign policy
During her stay she referred to my having been to Nairobi and Paris, and commented on what she believed was a difference in attitude in the two cities. In Nairobi, she said, when someone got their first good job, they bought a new suit of clothes. Their clothes marked them out from those who, for whatever reason, did not have a good job. She had been much surprised, then, to travel to Paris and find that people with good jobs went to work in very ordinary clothes. “You see women on the metro,” she said, “who have good jobs, going to work in ski pants. The ladies in Nairobi won’t believe me when I tell them.”
I don’t mean to offend anyone, and some people can look a million dollars in a tracksuit. Still, the fact that so many people in the wealthiest, most free, most democratic societies in human history opt to wear what is comparatively drab clothing in historical and cultural terms, is worthy of consideration.
We are, of course social animals, influenced by others and trapped inside the aesthetic prejudices of our age. Most people probably share my view that Barack Obama looks great in his tailored suits and would look like a prat if he dressed as elaborately as Henry VIII (who, come to think of it, wore something akin to ski pants with codpieces).
Nevertheless, the metaphysical, moral, and existential aspects of the matter merit consideration. Since reading Maureen Gaffney’s Flourishing, I realise there is also a psychological/physical aspect to the topic. People manifest their feelings in physical ways, eg, smiling when they are happy, and this mind/body effect is a two-way street. The physical manifestation can bring into being the mental state. Deciding to smile can cheer you up. So, science supports the proposition that wearing a well-cut jacket that encourages you to stand up straight is helpful when confronting the existential void. It further follows, I suppose, though it pains me to admit it, that the French contribution to the western intellectual tradition has not been entirely pernicious.
