Do They Read First Things?

It looks like some youngsters in the business world have taken to heart David Mills’ recent advice  (also mentioned in the While We’re At It section of the February 2013 issue of First Things ) about dressing to the nines.

Formal Fridays: top hats, silk dresses, matching watches and socks. The whole shebang. Not too formal though. For most, the tattoos and gauges ensure a certain nonconformist vibe behind the bow ties. Not quite as fancy as a group of my college friends who held the tradition of “Fresh Fridays.”

I daresay Bill Cunningham would be pleased. “Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life,” he says. “You couldn’t do away with it. It would be like doing away with civilization.”

Or as Carson, the butler of Downton Abbey says, “To misquote Dr. Johnson, ‘When you’re tired of style, you’re tired of life.’”

By the way, we at First Things dress up Monday through Thursday too.