Was a rustic Fiorucci really out of the question?

Many visitors, as taken as we were by a Fiorucci shirt's aberrant Brummellism, have wondered if the politics of the style could be expunged to clothe an honest rustic. Here, a prototype has been run up for the innocent, favouring that very thirst for Reform. Does this shirt suggest of its wearer, that he had asked his servant on going out, Where do I dine today, John? Is he the sort of man who might confess, Madame, I once ate a pea? George Brummell's remarks such as this - so deeply etched upon le beau monde as to have left it frantic, to this day, not to fail their affect - cast no shadow on this admittedly blank accoutrement. But in losing much coher-ency, have we lived up to our leeks?






William Hazlitt
Selected Writings
Jon Cook, editor
Brummelliana
  London Weekly Review
  2 February 1828
Oxford University Press, 1991©