David Bruce: Clothing Anecdotes

• Ruggero Leoncavallo, composer of Pagliacci, once was asked by Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany to compose an opera. He composed Der Roland von Berlin, and he went to the German court to deliver the score. Because the Kaiser was busy, Mr.Leoncavallo was asked to wait with a number of other people, all of whom were wearing full-dress military uniforms, while he was wearing his usual somber black clothing. Of course, he stood out, and many chamberlains who saw him and thought that he did not belong in the company of those officers asked if he was supposed to be there. Mr. Leoncavallo said, “I found in the end that it saved time to keep my invitation card constantly in my hand, as no sooner had I put it back in than I had to take it out again to satisfy some other bespangled official that the right place for me was not the servants’ hall.” Of course, this was annoying, but soon Mr. Leoncavallo got satisfaction. The Kaiser arrived, complimented his score, and invited him to lunch. Mr. Leoncavallo says about the officials, “As soon as the Kaiser had gone, they all crowded around me smiling, smirking, scraping, bowing, as if I had suddenly become a second God the Father Almighty.”

• Lucille Ball was the star of I Love Lucy, but co-star Vivian Vance was perhaps the funniest one off-screen. Tallulah Bankhead once guested on the show, and when Lucy said that she liked the sweater that Tallulah was wearing, Tallulah insisted on giving it to her, although Lucy pointed out that I Love Lucy was No. 1 in the ratings, and so she could afford to buy her own sweater. Vivian watched with interest as Tallulah insisted that Lucy take the sweater that she said she liked, and then Vivian said, “Tallulah, I love those pants.” By the way, Vivian had to gain weight in order to appear on I Love Lucy because Lucy, a former glamor model, wanted to be the prettiest one in the show. Lucy would call her up once a year and say, “Viv, dear, we start shooting in a couple of weeks. Start eating!”

• At a show in London, Roy Stride, lead singer of Scouting for Girls, sang the song “1+1=3,” which is about an unplanned pregnancy. The lyrics include the line “Take off your clothes and come to bed,” and when he sang the line, six males in the balcony stripped off their clothing and flung it onto the stage. Mr. Stride says, “I was nearly knocked out by a shoe.” He adds, “When I wrote the song, I honestly never considered fans would take the lyrics literally. Greg [Churchouse], our guitarist, says he suspected there might be some stripping. He blames me for being confronted by six bare male butts when he walked into our dressing room after the show. I was just glad the guys had come to collect their clothes. I was worried they’d go home naked.”

• On Groucho Marx’ You Bet Your Life TV quiz show, some of the guests were as entertaining as Groucho. For example, the Reverend James Whitcomb Broughter, a Baptist minister, told about getting dressed for a benefit. He had trouble tying his bowtie, so when the man who was going to take him to the banquet room showed up, he asked him if he knew how to tie it. The man did know, and he asked Reverend Broughter to lie down on the bed and then he tied the bowtie. Reverend Broughter asked, “Why did you make me lie down on the bed?” The man replied, “That’s the only way I can do it. I’m an undertaker.”

• Enrico Caruso and Frances Alda met on a ferryboat to travel together to and make some recordings in Camden, New Jersey. It was a rainy day, and Mr. Caruso pointed out to Ms. Alda, “You have no rubbers [rainy-day footwear] on.” Ms. Alda replied, “I don’t like to wear rubbers. I have pretty feet, and I’m proud of them. I’m a woman.” Mr. Caruso was still worried about her, and once they were in Camden, he took Ms. Alda to the best shoe store there and had the employees bring a large assortment of rainy-day footwear until Ms. Alda found a pair she liked. Only then did they make the recordings.

• English fans of punk rockers sometimes engaged in gobbing—spitting on punk rockers as they performed. Supposedly this was a compliment, although as you would expect often the punk rockers did not like it. English singer Honey Bane once performed a concert wearing a raincoat and holding an umbrella. After her performance, the raincoat and umbrella were drenched with saliva, but she was dry when she took off the protective clothing.

• One of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s masterpieces is the painting Madam Charpentier and Her Children. He dined often with the Charpentier family and even called himself the Charpentiers’ “artist-in-waiting.” Once, he showed up to dine but had forgotten to wear a jacket, which was the conventional clothing of the time. So that Mr. Renoir would not feel embarrassed, Georges Charpentier had the other male guests take off their jackets.

• People should be able to wear pretty much whatever they want to, as long as the clothing covers the essentials, but other people can be judgmental. Ani DiFranco started her career as a musician with a look that included a shaved head and big boots. Later, she decided she wanted hair and a pretty dress. But she remembers the first time she walked out onstage in a dress—she heard young women screaming, “Sellout!”

• Conductor Arturo Toscanini sometimes got very angry at his musicians. Often, he would break his baton in anger. Once, his baton would not break, so he took out his handkerchief and tried to tear it; however, it would not tear. Therefore, Mr. Toscanini took off his coat and tore it to shreds. Feeling much better, he continued the rehearsal.

• “It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.” — Henry David Thoreau


• “The finest clothing made is a person’s skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.” — Mark Twain

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David Bruce: Clothing Anecdotes

Luisa Tetrazzini (1871-1940), a coloratura, was singing Lucia di Lammermoor in Puebla, Mexico, on a stage flooded because of a rainstorm and a leaky roof. To keep from ruining her dress, she held it a few inches above the water. This displeased a woman in a box, who commented on the shocking display of a lady’s ankles. Ms. Tetrazzini walked underneath the woman’s box, then improvised her own words to the music of the opera: “Madam, you are shocked, very shocked, I know it, yes I do. But do you know the stage is soaking wet and our dresses all are spoiling, yet just to please you I am ready, perfectly ready, to let my dress drag through the wet and be completely ruined if you, dear Madam, will promise to buy me a lovely new one.” This gave the audience a laugh and kept the critic quiet for the rest of the performance.

Marie Camargo (1710-1770) was an innovator in ballet. Before Ms. Camargo, ballerinas danced in ankle-length skirts. Ms. Camargo caused a scandal by dancing in skirts that showed part of her calf; however, this allowed her to create ballet moves that featured the ballerinas’ feet—she was the likely inventor of the entrechat-quatre, a move in which the ballerina jumps and crosses her feet four times while in the air. Later, Marie Sallé (1707-1756) further improved the ballerina’s clothing by dancing in a petticoat and a simple dress—although she still wore a corset. Today, classical ballerinas dance in tights and a short skirt known as a tutu.

Actor Sheldon Leonard was surprised by the theatrical audiences in Palm Springs. While he was touring in Margin for Error, he noticed that on opening night the theater was packed with Palm Springs socialites, dressed to the hilt. However, after the intermission, the theater was half empty. This made Mr. Leonard worry, until the theater manager told him, “It’s always that way. They come for the opening. The women see what all the other women are wearing and that’s it. Off they go, back home.”

Gertrude Stein was able to buy paintings by Picasso and other famous artists early in their careers partly because she economized on clothing. In a conversation with Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, she advised Hadley to buy clothes for durability and not for style, and to buy paintings with the money thus saved. During the conversation, Hadley had a difficult time refraining from looking at Ms. Stein’s eccentric and decidedly unfashionable clothing.

Giacomo Puccini’s first big success was the opera Manon Lescaut, for which soprano Lucrezia Bori once bought a beautiful dress in which to make her debut as Manon in a revival. Puccini visited her backstage, looked at the dress, and told her that it was too lovely—after all, her character was supposed to be penniless and starving. Then, to make the dress more suitable to her character, he splashed it with coffee. Ms. Bori was not pleased with Puccini’s attention to detail.

American soprano Olive Fremstad disliked meeting her fans. Knowing that some of her fans would insist on coming backstage to meet her after she sang the part of Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, during the final act she always wore street clothes around which she wrapped yards of chiffon. After the act was over, she unwrapped the chiffon and was on her way home before her fans had a chance to come backstage.

Clara Louise Kellogg (1842-1916) owned her own opera costumes. While performing in La Traviata, she discovered that the co-starring tenor had chronically dirty hands and was leaving his fingerprints on her costumes. Ms. Kellogg spoke with the offending tenor, who offered to wash his hands before performances if she bought the soap—which she did for the remaining performances.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to coordinate clothing with one’s friends. Once, Peter Ustinov invited Wolf Mankowitz to attend a play. When they met to go to the play, Mr. Ustinov was wearing comfortable clothing, but Mr. Mankowitz was dressed up. Then Mr. Mankowitz invited Mr. Ustinov to attend a play. This time when they met to go to the play, Mr. Mankowitz was wearing comfortable clothing, but Mr. Ustinov was dressed up.

Oliver Herford always wore suits of the same color. Mr. Herford explained that each spring he sent his tailor a sample of his dandruff and asked him to match it exactly. He once wore an outrageous derby, explaining that it was a whim of his wife’s. Advised to throw the derby away, he declined, saying, “You don’t know my wife—she has a whim of iron.”

During a performance in the ballet Firebird in New York, Irina Baronova leaped onto the stage, only to have her shoulder straps break and the top of her costume fall down. Her dance partner, Paul Petroff, reached under her arm and held up her costume while she finished the dance. Later, they examined her costume and discovered that it had been sabotaged—a razor blade had been used to almost sever the shoulder straps.

In Paris, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who was later to be Pope John XXIII, attended a reception at which the hostess wore a low-cut gown. Everyone watched Father Roncalli to see his reaction to the hostess’ clothing, and he set everyone at ease by saying, “I can’t imagine why all the guests keep looking at me, a poor old sinner, when my neighbor, our charming hostess, is so much younger and more attractive.”

Throughout his life, Jackie Gleason kept gaining and losing weight. Eventually, he had three sets of clothing—one for when he weighed 200 pounds, one for 240 pounds, and one for 280 pounds. He called the largest set of clothing his hippopotamus clothes.

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David Bruce: Clothing Anecdotes

Lots of queens exist in the world: fair queens, prom queens, and rodeo queens. Of course, a rodeo queen is not likely to ride in a chariot powered by four horses. Instead, she is going to be riding the horse, moving like the wind, wearing cowboy boots, and not letting her hat touch the ground. Tina Johnson, a former queen’s court advisor for the Yoncalla (Oregon) Rodeo, and therefore an expert, says, “If your hat hits the ground, then your head had better be in it. Losing your hat is a major rodeo queen faux pas.” (As everyone knows, lots of queens speak French.) So how does a rodeo queen keep her hat on while galloping on a horse? The use of lots of bobby pins helps, as does wearing a hat one size too small. Another expert, the 2007 Yoncalla Rodeo Queen and 2008 Senior Princess Whitney Richey says, “One of the new girls was complaining because her hat was too tight. We told her, ‘Take an Advil.’”

In 1994, when she was acting in John Waters’ Serial Mom, Kathleen Turner discovered that she had rheumatoid arthritis. She exercised regularly, as the doctor ordered, and she had surgery as necessary; however, for long periods of time she was unable to wear anything but slippers, although she loves shoes. In an interview with Rachel Cooke that was published in March of 2008, Ms. Turner said that she was very pleased that she had been able to wear shoes for two weeks. She had gone into a shoe store, tried a pair on, and cried, “I can wear these!” The shoe-store employee assisting her said, “Of course you can, dear.” Ms. Turner admits, “I scared the hell out of him.”

If you are really famous, it’s hard to avoid the paparazzi. For a while, celebrity photographers were after all the photographs of Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie that they could get. (Actually, they still are.) And for a while, Ms. Aniston wore the same outfit over and over, hoping that media editors would think that newly taken photographs were actually old, leftover photographs. According to celebrity photographer Gary Sun, that trick will no longer work. He says that these days the media will “use the pictures, [and] they’ll talk smack about you for wearing the same clothes over and over.”

Even a member of the punk group the Sex Pistols can fall in love and clean up his act—at least for a while. When guitarist Sid Vicious fell in love, lead singer Johnny Rotten was amazed at how it changed him: “He even changed his underwear for the first time in two years.” Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren didn’t believe it: “Did you actually see him taking it off?” Mr. Rotten replied, “He didn’t take it off. He had been wearing it too long for that. He had to shave it off.”

Music has no fans like punk fans. Richard Hell once designed a T-shirt with a bull’s-eye target and the words “Please kill me” on it. Richard Lloyd, lead guitarist of the punk group Television, once wore the T-shirt. Some wild-eyed punk fans saw the T-shirt and told him, “If that’s what you want, we’ll be happy to oblige because we’re such big fans!” Immediately, Mr. Lloyd thought, “I am NOT wearing this shirt again.”

Famed photographer Yousuf Karsh took a portrait of Senator John F. Kennedy during his Presidential campaign. Senator Kennedy had not realized that Mr. Karsh would take color photographs in addition to his usual black-and-white photographs. Thinking that his tie was an unsuitable color for his portrait, Senator Kennedy requested of Mr. Karsh, “Let me have yours.” When the color photographs were taken, Senator Kennedy was wearing Mr. Karsh’s tie.

Beatrix Potter wore sturdy clothing because of her work on the farms she owned. The wool in her clothing came from the sheep she owned, and she wore clogs in the fields. However, the sturdy clothing was hardly fashionable. A tramp she met once on a road as she walked to a pasture during a cold and windy day thought that she was homeless like himself and greeted her with, “It’s a sad weather for the likes o’ thee and me!

Adrienne Janic, host of the car show Overhaulin’ on TLC, attended the 2008 Christian Oscars: the Movieguide awards. She wore a dress with slits up the sides, and when she sat down, she used two napkins so that she would have enough material to cover up the top of the slits. Even so, one of the Christians present warned her about the evils of wearing such a dress. Ms. Janic replied, “Oh, I’ve got a mansion in hell.”

Before her marriage, the name of children’s book author Barbara Park was Barbara Lynne Tidswell. Her mother made many of Barbara’s clothes, and she often monogrammed the clothing, too. Because BLT is an abbreviation for Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwiches, Barbara says that when she wore the monogrammed clothing, she felt “like a walking sandwich board.”

In New York, Joan Collins and Bette Davis attended a Night of a 100 Stars gala. Ms. Collins was wearing a dress that she describes as “a low-cut, backless, armless and slit-to-the-thigh silver lamé gown, created by the Dynasty designer Nolan Miller.” Ms. Davis looked at Ms. Collins and the dress, then she told Ms. Collins, “M’dear, you almost have that dress on.”

Conrad Kenson was an actor who knew the importance of good shoes in his profession. He was also wealthy, and when he died he left $250,000 to the Actors’ Fund so that actors could go to a Thom McCann store and get a paid-for pair of shoes. Mr. Kenson once said, “An actor cannot hold his head up if his heels are run-down.”

In 1936, the always well-dressed Sir Malcolm Sargent conducted an orchestra in Australia, surprising the musicians with his impeccable suit and the red carnation in his buttonhole. During a break in the rehearsal, members of the brass section went outside, visited a street vendor, and returned with decorations in their own buttonholes: each was sporting a red candy apple.

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David Bruce: Clothing Anecdotes

While recording an album, all involved must be very careful not to record extraneous noises such as squeaks. While recording the album Diva!, soprano Leslie Garrett and the musicians ran into a problem because of a squeak that would not go away. Thinking the squeak might come from a wobbly music stand, the musicians moved the music stands a few inches and tried again. The squeak remained. Thinking the squeak might come from a wobbly chair, the musicians moved the chairs a few inches and tried again. The squeak remained. Then Ms. Garrett took thought, held the music engineer’s head to her chest, and asked, “Is that what you heard?” It was—the squeak came from the underwiring of her bra. Ms. Garrett removed her bra in the ladies room, then made a squeak-free recording. Since then, whenever they record a new album together, the music engineer asks her, “Have you got the right bra on?”

Track and field star Florence Griffith Joyner was known for her outrageous racing clothes and painted fingernails as well as for her wins and world records. For example, at the 1988 Olympic Trials at the Indiana University Track Stadium, she wore a one-legged green bodysuit and a one-legged turquoise-and-purple bodysuit. In addition, for one race, she painted her long fingernails mostly orange—at their ends she painted black and white stripes. At the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea, she wore a fluorescent blue-and-white outfit as well as an all-lace bodysuit that resembled a negligee. At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, she painted nine fingernails red, white, and blue, and one fingernail gold—the color of the medal she hoped to win. Actually, in 1984 she won the silver medal in the 200-meter race, but in 1988 she won the gold.

While singing for the troops in her native Australia during World War II (despite having contracted polio), opera soprano Marjorie Lawrence always wore lovely gowns. Keeping them pressed was not as much of a problem as it would seem because there was always a soldier or nurse who was willing to iron them. Once, a nurse took a gown to press it, but with the beginning of the concert approaching, the gown had not been returned, so she sent her husband after it. He found the nurse wearing it—and a half-dozen other nurses waiting for a chance to try it on. The nurse explained, “We’ve been out here in the wilderness nearly two years and this is the first lovely dress we’ve seen since leaving home. I simply had to put it on.”

Wandering artists in the American frontier days used to make money by painting portraits with no faces. The portraits might be of one person, a married couple, or even an entire family, and the people in the portraits wore fancy, expensive clothing. The artist then traveled around, showing settlers the portraits. If a settler liked one, the artist would then paint in the face of the settler, or of the settler and his wife, or even the settler’s entire family, depending on which portrait the settler bought. Thus, many settlers owned portraits showing them wearing clothing they had never worn.

After Nate “Tiny” Archibald played for the Boston Celtics, he stayed active in the inner city and did good deeds as the recreation director for the Harlem Armory Shelter. Once, he got six free tickets from the New Jersey Nets, which he gave to some residents of the shelter. All of them dressed nicely in suits and ties for the game, and afterward Tiny took them down to the Nets dressing room to meet the members of the team. One of the players asked Tiny about the people he was with: “Who are they? Lawyers?”

During the 1992 Olympic Games, Hassiba Boulmerka of Jordan won the gold medal in the 1,500-meter race. As an athlete, Ms. Boulmerka received death threats because fundamentalist Muslims felt that she should keep her body covered in public instead of running in shorts and a sleeveless top. Ms. Boulmerka, who is herself Muslim, answered her critics by saying that she is an athlete and she dresses the way middle-distance runners must dress for competitions.

During the 1981 Stanley Cup play-offs, Richard Sevigny, the goalie for the Montreal Canadiens, predicted that Montreal star Guy Lafleur would put Edmonton Oilers star Wayne Gretzky “in his back pocket.” In game one of the play-offs, Mr. Gretzky made five assists as the Oilers defeated the Canadiens, 6-3. Mr. Gretzky then skated over to Mr. Sevigny and patted the place where his back pocket would be if hockey uniforms had back pockets.

When he was a child, singer James Brown’s family was impoverished, and he was frequently sent home from school because his clothing was in such poor shape. In fact, one reason he began stealing was so he could have decent clothing. Of course, the stealing eventually led to his arrest. After being found guilty of stealing a car battery, he was sentenced to 8 to 16 years in prison.

Some stand-up comedians pay way too attention to what they wear. Comedian Jay Sankey met a comedian who tried to dress in a way that supported his on-stage character (an excellent idea), but who then asked Mr. Sankey what the audience would think of his shoes. Mr. Sankey replied, “If they notice your shoes, you aren’t funny.”

Pop singer Madonna was an original even as a schoolgirl. Like the other students, Madonna wore a uniform at school, but she kept her school locker stocked with colorful hair bows and socks so she could be different from her classmates.

When Carol Burnett was growing up, she lived with her grandmother in a small apartment—so small that young Carol hung her clothes in the shower. For years, whenever Carol put on her clothing, it was slightly damp.

Fashions in clothing change over time. In the late 19th century, both infant boys and infant girls wore dresses.

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David Bruce: Clothing Anecdotes

ANDY WARHOL

https://pixabay.com/en/andy-warhol-artist-designer-head-149796/

In 1977, Pop artist Andy Warhol attended a dinner given at the White House by President Gerald Ford. Mr. Warhol wore a formal white jacket and pants, and a white tie. Because the dress pants itched, underneath them Mr. Warhol wore a pair of blue jeans.

When the Metropolitan Opera moved to Lincoln Center, Leontyne Price starred in a Franco Zeffirelli production of Antony and Cleopatra that was plagued by mishaps. This cooled her relationship with the Met, and she devoted her gifts to the San Francisco Opera and other venues. However, when Schuyler Chapin became the Met’s general manager, he wanted Ms. Price to sing at the Met, so he set up a luncheon with her at La Cote Basque, a fancy New York restaurant. Ms. Price wore elegant black pants and a mink coat, but when the manager of the La Cote Basque, Madame Henriette, saw her, she told Mr. Chapin to tell Ms. Price that women in pants could not eat there. Mr. Chapin pleaded, “Madame, if you deny Leontyne Price, I’ll never be able to persuade her to return to the Metropolitan Opera. She asked to lunch at your restaurant. Please! We need her back on the Met stage. New York misses her. Help me!” Madame Henriette relented, saying, “Never let it be said that La Cote Basque has denied our city a great artist. I say rules can be bent!”

Katherine Hepburn’s movie studio wanted her to dress stylishly all the time, but when she wasn’t acting, Ms. Hepburn preferred to wear comfortable clothing such as jeans. Therefore, the movie studio stole her jeans one day as she was acting. Ms. Hepburn send the movie studio VIPs word that if her jeans were not returned, she would walk around naked. Of course, she didn’t walk around naked, but she did walk around wearing silk panties. The movie studio returned her jeans.

When he was in his twenties, Ray Bradbury used to live in a tenement in downtown Los Angeles. Women would wear dresses for big parties such as Cinco de Mayo. They would then throw the dresses from balconies to women in the street below. Mr. Bradbury says that “the dresses used during Cinco de Mayo became the clothing the young women who owned no dresses used the rest of the year.”

Tenor Enrico Caruso was capable of great kindness. He once saw a beggar shivering outside his hotel, so he gave him his fur-lined coat. Mr. Caruso owned many clothes, so many that people asked why he had such a large wardrobe. To such inquiries, he replied, “Two reasons. First reason, I like. Second reason, other people like. Also, I give to people who ask.”

Men who wear women’s clothing often wear large sizes. Hearing that a student at Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to be Girls planned to dance the night away in 4-inch heels, Miss Veronica Vera asked if 4-inch heels would be too challenging. The student replied that 4 inches weren’t all that high when the student was wearing size-14 shoes.

Judy Garland and Katherine Hepburn appeared in a group portrait of MGM movie stars that appeared in Life magazine in 1948. Ms. Hepburn, who was wearing slacks, told Ms. Garland, who was wearing a pale skirt and a black blouse, “I knew I’d be badly dressed, and I knew you’d be badly dressed. The only difference is that you took the time.”

Joan Crawford often wore shoulder pads despite having big shoulders to begin with. Director Michael Curtiz disliked the look, and he once told her, “You and your damned shoulder pads,” and he ripped her dress. Ms. Crawford remembered, “Then he stared in shocked amazement. The shoulders were still there. They were real.”

Mexican artist Diego Rivera knew what was important in life. While he was living in Paris, a fire broke out in his apartment one night as he was sleeping. Mr. Rivera ran around, gathering paintings and taking them outside to safety. Only after he had saved several paintings did he discover that he wasn’t wearing any pants.

Children’s picture book creator Ezra Jack Keats became famous when his book The Snowy Day won a Caldecott Medal. He wore celebratory underwear while accepting the prize—his undershirt and underpants were decorated with Caldecott insignia and mottos.

Tim Conway sometimes creates outlandish suits for the times when he and Harvey Korman eat out together. Once, he made a suit with the same pattern as the wallpaper in his living room so that he could disappear by blending into the background.

T-shirts saying, “A Woman’s Place is on Top,” may not mean what you think it means. The slogan refers to the motto of the 1978 American Women’s Himalayan Expedition that climbed 26,540 feet to the top of Annapurna I.

At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, American gymnast Mary Lou Retton took home several souvenirs, including five medals and the leotard she competed in. She told reporters, “I am never going to wash this uniform!”

Bette Midler got her start in the gay club known as the Continental Baths, where her many fans frequently wore nothing but towels. For her encores, the Divine Miss M reappeared on stage, wearing only a towel.

Tennis star Arthur Ashe could afford to wear very expensive clothing, but his favorite piece of clothing was a simple T-shirt bearing this slogan: “A citizen of the world.”

Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 911, is a sloppy dresser. When he won an Emmy for TV Nation, he did wear a tuxedo—but continued to wear his baseball cap.

“You can imagine my surprise / When I won first prize / At a masquerade dance / I attended by chance / Without even wearing a disguise.”—Patricia Black.

When gay teenager Paul Guilbert asked fellow gay teenager Aaron Fricke to their high school prom, Mr. Fricke replied, “OK, but I’ll never have time to buy a gown.”

Many world-class men’s gymnasts are small. Kurt Thomas was 5-foot-5 and 126 pounds—small enough that his wife, Beth, could wear his clothes.

Sometimes, in-laws can be pushy. For a while, Al Gore’s mother bought all of his wife Tipper’s clothing until Al made her stop.

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David Bruce: Clothing Anecdotes

By Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France (Isadora Duncan à Bellevue) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Abraham Walkowitz [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan was also a pioneer in dance costuming. She often wore little more than a short, filmy tunic and left her legs and arms bare. In fact, many women of the time wore more clothing while swimming than Ms. Duncan danced in. Early in her career, she danced for upper-class ladies at teas and garden parties. At least once, some ladies left during her performances because they were scandalized by her lack of clothing. Late in her career, evangelist Billy Sunday complained, “That Bolshevik hussy doesn’t wear enough clothes to pad a crutch!”

Two women came to Rabbi Hirschele Orenstein of Brisk (Brest-Litovsk) with a dispute over a basket of clothing. The two women were neighbors, and each woman accused the other of taking clothing from her clothesline. The rabbi talked to the two women, but he was unable to tell which woman was lying. Therefore, he asked the women to leave the basket of disputed clothing with him, then leave and come back in an hour. While the women were gone, he asked his wife to mix some of her clothing with the clothing in the basket. When the two women returned in an hour, he did not tell the women what he had done, but he asked the first woman to go through the clothing and pick out what was hers. The woman quickly made two piles of clothing: one pile contained the clothing of the rabbi’s wife. The rabbi then asked the other woman to go through the clothing and pick out what was hers. This woman said, “It is all mine.” The rabbi replied, “In that case, none of it is yours.”

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was one of the first television shows to engage in political satire—for which it was censored in the form of cancellation despite its popularity. One of the jokes that clean-cut comedians Tom and Dick Smothers made was about the leadership in this country during the Vietnam War. Tom pointed out, “There’s a theory of clothes and politics. There’s a definite correlation. You can tell who’s running the country by how much clothes people wear.” This does make sense. People without a lot of money can’t afford to buy a lot of clothing, and so they are the less-ons. And, as Tom Smothers pointed out, that means that the people running the country are the more-ons.

When soprano Joan Hammond was a child, an accident severely scarred her left arm, so she always wore long-sleeved clothing when she grew up. At a concert in Australia, she wore long sleeves, upsetting a woman in the audience who said, “Why does she wear them? So ugly and old-fashioned! It spoils an evening’s entertainment looking at them!” Unfortunately for the overly critical woman, Joan’s brother, Leo, was in the audience, and he told her about Joan’s childhood accident and resulting scars, then asked, “Do you come to a concert to criticise clothes or to listen to the music?”

Children’s book writer Phyllis Reynolds Naylor called her paternal grandmother Mammaw. In rural Mississippi, Mammaw would drive her car around on Sundays picking up children to take them to church. If a child’s parents objected that their child did not have clothes good enough for Sunday School, Mammaw would open the trunk of her car, rummage in a box for suitable clothing that would fit the child, dress the child, then put the child in the back seat with the rest of the church-going children.

Pianist Richard Goode was far from dressing with splendor, although at times he tried. He once ran the hot water in his bath in an attempt to steam wrinkles out of his tailcoat. Unfortunately, he forgot to stop the bathtub, and an hour later the ceiling of the apartment underneath his had collapsed. On another occasion, he put his newly washed white bow tie in a toaster oven so he could dry it. Unfortunately, he singed the bow tie, so he tried to cover up the singed places with talcum powder.

Ernestine Schumann-Heink had a problem when she first met Maurice Grau of the Metropolitan Opera Company—she did not have clothing fine enough for such an important meeting and such an important man. Fortunately, Lillian Nordica came to the rescue and lent her a silk dress—with a train—that made the necessary statement: The person wearing this dress is a prima donna. Later, Ms. Schumann-Heink embarrassed Ms. Nordica by thanking her publicly for the loan.

Mary Moody Emerson, the aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson, once was visited by the mother of Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden. Cynthia Thoreau was wearing clothing with pink ribbons, and Mary Emerson shut her eyes while talking to her. Eventually, she asked Mrs. Thoreau if she would like to know the reason for the tightly closed eyes. Mrs. Thoreau said that she would, and Mary Emerson replied, “I don’t like to see a person of your age guilty of such levity in her dress.”

Over 30 years ago, William Goldman wrote a humorous fantasy titled The Princess Bride about true love. In it, a farm boy named Westley pursued his true beloved, named Buttercup, even coming back from the dead in order to rescue her from the bad guys. One of the great moments in Mr. Goldman’s life was seeing a young couple obviously in love wearing matching T-shirts that bore the legend “WESTLEY NEVER DIES.”

When Alicia Alonso was a little girl in Cuba attending ballet class while wearing tennis shoes—due to a shortage of ballet slippers—her teacher held up a small pair of ballet slippers and announced that they would be given to whichever student they fitted best. When young Alicia put on the slippers, they fit perfectly, and she rose to her feet, danced, and cried, “Look! Look! They fit!”

Artist Edna Hibel simply doesn’t care about clothing, preferring to wear her old, comfortable dresses. When she does buy a new dress, she let it hang in her closet for a year or two until she is used to it.

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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved

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