The London Lounge

“Everything about a human being should be beautiful: from the face to the clothes, from the soul to the thoughts” – says Astrov, the country doctor (like Chekhov himself) in “Uncle Vanya”.

Truth finds ways to vent out through different mouths, in different ages. How similar this is to Balzac’s assertion (which I don’t quote for the first time here) from his “Treatise on Elegant Living”, that “in order to be elegant, one must have a beautiful soul”.

In one of the first movies on dresswithsyle.com Michael Alden explains what is the purpose of clothes: to focus the attention on the person and particularly to the face and there – to the eyes. What are the eyes, if not windows to the soul? Hopefully what we see there is in accord with what shows on the outside.

Elegant dress cannot exist outside elegant thoughts. One may be correctly, dashingly or interestingly dressed – but elegance does not feel the need to assert itself; one simply feels at ease and puts others at ease. The authentic elegant dresser radiates an aura that makes people inclined to receive the thoughts he comunicates.

But beware of putting the carrriage before the horses, for the cloth does not make the monk.

This is so true. This is in line I think with the poem recently posted here. It shouldn't be too much about the clothes but about the wearer. Elegance should be more than skin deep.

From Oscar Wilde's Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894):

"The only way to atone for being occasionally a little overdressed is by being always absolutely over-educated."

Kalos kai agathos