ABSTRACT
In Thomas More's Utopia everyone wears plain leather for work, and wool in its natural colour when at leisure. A single garment may combine several forms of both kinds of beauty. The hostility is implicit in the word 'fashion' itself, which is often used when the word 'clothes' would do, precisely to cast a slur on clothes. Robin's Lincoln green supports local industry and is also a woodland green, although green was, in addition, the colour both of political radicalism and also of youth, spring and May Day. Immanuel Kant, for instance, had little good to say about clothes, but when he was talking about beauty in the world he distinguished between what he called free beauty and accessory beauty. There are figures of national salvation, like Joan of Arc in clanking men's armour, with pudding-basin coiffure; and embodiments of nationalist prejudice, like John Bull with his planet-shaped Union Jack waistcoat.
