English clothes are not meant for Americans, but for Englishmen
to wear: that is a great cardinal truth which Americans would do
well to ponder. Possibly you have heard that an Englishman's
clothes fit him with an air. They do so; they fit him with a lot
of air around the collar and a great deal of air adjacent to the
waistband and through the slack of the trousers; frequently they
fit him with such an air that he is entirely surrounded by space,
as in the case of a vacuum bottle. Once there was a Briton whose
overcoat collar hugged the back of his neck; so they knew by that
he was no true Briton, but an impostor--and they put him out of
the union. In brief, the kind of English clothes best suited for
an American to wear is the kind Americans make.
I knew these things in advance--or, anyway, I should have known
them; nevertheless I felt our trip abroad would not be complete
unless I brought back some London clothes. I took a look at the
shop-windows and decided to pass up the ready-made things. The
coat shirt; the shaped sock; the collar that will fit the neckband
of a shirt, and other common American commodities, seemed to be
practically unknown in London.
The English dress shirt has such a dinky little bosom on it that
by rights you cannot refer to it as a bosom at all; it comes nearer
to being what women used to call a guimpe.
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