Iconic
clothing has been secularized. A guardsman in a dress
uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red
as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with
no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering
significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative
color and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic
information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply
magnificent.
-- Angela Carter
1940-1992, British Author
We know, Mr.
Weller -- we, who are men of the world -- that a good
uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.
-- Charles Dickens
1812-1870, British Novelist
This death's
livery which walled its bearers from ordinary life was sign
that they have sold their wills and bodies to the State: and
contracted themselves into a service not the less abject for
that its beginning was voluntary.
-- Thomas E. Lawrence
1888-1935, British Soldier,
Arabist, Writer
The connection
between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest
clothes are those you wear as soldiers.
-- Virginia Woolf
1882-1941, British Novelist,
Essayist
