Friday, March 05, 2010

The relativity of fashion

A Times leader the other day included an anecdote about Albert Einstein’s attitude to clothes:

"When his wife asked him to change clothes to meet an ambassador, Einstein told her that if the envoy wanted to see him, he was here, and if he wanted to see his clothes, he’d open his closet and show him his suits. To Einstein, fashion wasn’t rocket science."

That reminded me of an anecdote in Otto Frisch’s autobiography, which explains how the English attitude to clothes meant that the great man could not live here:

"In his later years [Einstein] usually wore a turtleneck pullover. In fact he detested all formality, & for that reason - so I was told - did not stay in England, when Hitler came to power, but went to America instead. To give him a big welcome to their country, his English friends invited him to parties where everybody wore tailcoats or dinner jackets, & food was served by liveried servants. Einstein felt he couldn’t possibly live in a country where so many formalities had to be observed; so all that hospitality was completely self-defeating"

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