To return to the outward and visible man of fashion, from whose
peculiarities our dissertation upon the sublime and beautiful in
tailoring has too long detained us. The same subdued expression of
elegance and ease that pervades the leading articles of his attire,
extends, without exception, to all the accessories; or if he is
deficient in aught, the accessorial _toggery_, such as hats, boots,
_choker_, gloves, are always carefully attended to; for it is in this
department that so distinguished a member of the detective police as
ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised snobbery. You will never
see a man of fashion affect a Paget hat, for example, or a D'Orsayan
beaver: the former has a ridiculous exuberance of crown, the latter a by
no means allowable latitude of brim--besides, borrowing the fashion of a
hat, is with him what plagiarizing the interior furniture of the head is
with others. He considers stealing the idea of a hat low and vulgar, and
leaves the unworthy theft to be perpetrated by pretenders to fashion:
content with a hat that becomes him, he is careful never to be before or
behind the prevailing hat-intelligence of the time. Three hats your man
of fashion sedulously escheweth--a new hat, a shocking bad hat, and a
gossamer. As the song says, "when into a shop he goes" he never "buys a
four-and-nine," neither buyeth he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any of
the hats indebted for their glossy texture to the entrails of the silk
worm; he sporteth nothing below a two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and
putteth it not on his head until his valet, exposing it to a shower of
rain, has "taken the shine out of it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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