“Whenever you are faced with the prospect of purchasing gloves, you must ask yourself if you would be bereft to lose one of them in the back of a taxicab. If not, then don’t buy them. You should only buy gloves so beautiful that to lose one of them would break your heart.”
“I believe that tidying is a celebration, a special send-off for those things that will be departing from the house, and therefore I dress accordingly.”
“You look... amazing!”
And I have to say, I agree. I’m wearing all black - but expensive black. The kind of deep, soft black that you fall into. A simple sleeveless dress from Whistles, the highest of Jimmy Choos, a pair of stunning uncut amethyst earrings. And please don’t ask how much it all cost, because that’s irrelevant. This is investment shopping. The biggest investment of my life.
I haven’t eaten anything all day so I’m nice and thin and for once my hair has fallen perfectly into shape. I look... well, I’ve never looked better in my life.
But of course, looks are only part of the package, aren’t they?”
“Of these older people many wear clothing reminiscent in some detail of home – an embroidered waistcoat or stomacher, or a gaily colored handkerchief, or a coat with large cuffs and fancy buttons. All these things are carefully avoided by the young, most of whom have learned to speak English and to affect the latest style of clothing. The girls wear ready-made dresses or shirt waists, and some of them look quite pretty. Some of the young men you would take to be Americans, of the type of clerks, but for the fact that they wear their hats in the room.”
“As I wouldn’t wear a costume, I couldn’t imagine him wanting to wear one. And seeing that the greater part of my wardrobe is black (It’s a sensible colour. It goes with anything. Well, anything black)[...].”
″‘I look quite like a gentleman!’
‘Yes, indeed,’ answered Geppetto, ‘for bear in mind that it is not fine clothes that make the gentleman, but rather clean clothes.‘”
“In a way, I guess I thought I didn’t really need to concern myself with this type of thing because compared to him, I don’t come across as ‘threatening,’ you know? I don’t sag my pants or wear my clothes super big. I go to a good school, and have goals and vision and ‘a great head on my shoulders,’ as Mama likes to say.”
“The magazine... is crammed full of food, clothing, cosmetics, furniture, and the physical bodies of young women, but where is the world of thought and ideas, the life of the mind and spirit?”
“There was an Old Person of Mold,
Who shrank from sensations of cold;
So he purchased some muffs, some furs, and some fluffs,
And wrapped himself well from the cold.”