However, to be serious, people do go to Paris and buy their clothes—­beautiful clothes!  Of course they do; especially those who go every year.  But the woman who goes abroad perhaps every four or five years is apt to be deficient in a trans-Atlantic sense.  “Match backgrounds, like charming little animals?” Never!  Oh, a very big Never Again!  And yet the next time shall you not find it a temptation to go just out of curiosity to find out what the newest artfully enticing little tune of the Pied Pipers of Paris will be!

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE CLOTHES OF A GENTLEMAN

It would seem that some of our great clothing establishments, with an eye to our polyglot ancestry, have attempted to incorporate some feature of every European national costume into a “harmonious” whole, and have thus given us that abiding horror, the freak American suit.  You will see it everywhere, on Broadway of every city and Main Street of every town, on the boardwalks and beaches of coast resorts, and even in remote farming villages.  It comes up to hit you in the face year after year in all its amazing variations:  waist-line under the arm pits, “trick” little belts, what-nots in the cuffs; trousers so narrow you fear they will burst before your eyes, pockets placed in every position, buttons clustered together in a tight little row or reduced to one.  And the worst of it is, few of our younger men know any better until they go abroad and find their wardrobe a subject for jest and derision.

If you would dress like a gentleman, you must do one of two things; either study the subject of a gentleman’s wardrobe until you are competent to pick out good suits from freaks and direct your misguided tailor, or, at least until your perceptions are trained, go to an English one.  This latter method is the easiest, and, by all odds, the safest.  It is not Anglomania but plain common sense to admit that, just as the Rue de la Paix in Paris is the fountainhead of fashions for women, Bond Street in London is the home of irreproachable clothes for men.

And yet, curiously enough, just as a woman shopping in Paris can buy frightful clothes—­or the most beautiful; a man can in America buy the worst clothes in the world—­and the best.

The ordinary run of English clothes may not be especially good, but they are, on the other hand, never bad; whereas American freak clothes are distortions like the reflections seen in the convex and concave mirrors of the amusement parks.  But not even the leading tailors of Bond Street can excel the supremely good American tailor—­whose clothes however are identical in every particular with those of London, and their right to be called “best” is for greater perfection of workmanship and fit.  This last is a dangerous phrase; “fit” means perfect set and line, not plaster tightness.

However, let us suppose that you are either young, or at least fairly young; that you have unquestioned social position, and that you are going to get yourself an entire wardrobe.  Let us also suppose your money is not unlimited, so that it may also be seen where you may not, or may if necessary, economize.