Perhaps what every orphan searches for is a history he can believe is his own.
And so, I too, will try to find a history, by speaking of people I admire when it comes to clothes.
One of whom: Charlie Chaplin.
Chaplin may not be the first thought on the mind of so many today in whom there is a proper return to elegance. Chaplin was the dark side of elegance.
It is quite possible that few understood the clothes of his age as completely as Chaplin. To begin with, he consistently used dark suits and white shirts to highlight his high-contrast complexion, furthered by the washed-out effect of early black and white film, as well as the darkness of his mustache. The mustache itself accomplished the effects of good clothing - focusing and refining the emotions of the face. We are constantly drawn to his face, and he constantly draws us there, only rarely by the obvious means of the close-up shot, more often by the way he looks, the way he dresses. This faciocentrism (face-centeredness) is an effect many others can only hope to accomplish.
Even more, Chaplin's most well-known creation was born in clothes, and midwifed by the sartorial urge: Chaplin said: "I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large." In these clothes he birthed that clown who is "higher than a politician" and as elegance's dark side, revealed the true elegance of witty self-depreciation.
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