Men, dress like a grown up

Put this on

And shave every day. Make sure your hair and fingernails are short and clean all the time.

Don't go getting all Italian on us, mind you. There's nothing more revolting and effeminate in a man than physical vanity. A man who cannot pass a mirror or plate glass window without glancing into it, is no man. But do make the effort to be neat, clean and properly dressed. The right sort of woman will notice. Trust me.

Also, I recently had occasion to compliment a young man of my acquaintance on his corduroy trousers.

I didn't realise that there is such a corduroy following out there...

An Address to the Corduroy Appreciation Club

I was lucky enough to be invited to speak to the fifth annual Grand Meeting of the Corduroy Appreciation Club on November 11th, the date which most resembles corduroy. Below is the text of my address. Hail the wale...

I came to this beautiful hall in a soiled subway car, but I might as well have travelled in a grand carriage. As I walked down the street I drew sidelong glances. “Who is this man,” they seemed to say. “A man at home where-ever he travels. A man of refinement. A man of elegance. A man of corduroy.”

...

This is not some fabric reserved for oily diplomats, or gentrymen of questionable morality. Corduroy is not weak! It is not effete or innefectual or elitist. Corduroy is a fabric built to take on the world. Tuck your corduroy trousers into your boots and feed the pigs. Roll up your corduroy sleeves and bring in the harvest. Put on a corduroy field jacket and go outside to build something.

...

We join together because there is one danger so clear, so present that without the efforts of those tonight assembled we might be subsumed by evil. Consumed by that inky darkness.

While I am hesitant to even speak this evil’s name, I must, and I will.

Tonight, friends, we join together to battle velvet.

Velvet is the fabric of evil.

Confidence men and crooked bankers join together nightly in velvet-fueled bacchanalias, laughing at their latest swindles. Sickly courtesans don velvet codpieces and drink champagne toasts to their dominance of the common man. Third-world dictators rub themselves with velvet swatches while firing squads execute dissident leaders.

Louche, lude, lascivious velvet is our enemy, and there is no one to fight against it but us.

~