Style Icon LXIV: Muhammed Ali

In a portrait by Karsh: "Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee!"

True Style

From a 1939 advertisement.

Jesus Christ and Buddha are two famous proponents of True Style, which needs to be beneficently directed outwards, and neither was a clothes-horse or a 'performer'. Anybody with enough cash can be well clothed; being well dressed is something more but being well dressed is never more than a slight clue to the style within. Even as a slight clue it is an uncertain one at that because a well dressed man might just be a popinjay or a dissembler or even totally obnoxious and there are many brilliant and good-hearted scruffs. Moreover, I dare say that Lucifer himself is resplendent in a purple satin-lined opera cloak and Lincoln Bennett opera hat; at least, he was the last time he dropped by.

Pygmalion 1938

The 1964 musical film of My Fair Lady, starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn, is the first cinematic production of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion that springs to most minds but the 1938 film, directed by Anthony Asquith, and starring Leslie Howard and the great Wendy Hiller (as a superb Liza Doolittle, with all the authenticity of a proper little cockney sparrah) and Wilfred Lawson, miraculous as  Alfred P Doolittle, is a tremendous film adaptation and should be shown more often. Today's picture is of Howard and Hiller in a still from the film.

It is a Question of Degree

Surely the greatest examples of true style are to be found in such as Buddha and Jesus Christ. The essence of their message seems to me to be self-denial, even self-abnegation; certainly the practice of putting the interests of others first; of perceiving need and meeting it quietly and, preferably, anonymously. We know nothing (so far as I know) about the clothes makers for Buddha and Jesus Christ but I dare say that they were, for their times, conventionally and neatly turned out. Being well dressed is no certain indicator of the possession of true, deep style and I have the feeling that Lucifer is better dressed than any Archangels left standing up above. Many of the best people that I know are incredibly scruffy, because clothes just hold no interest for them. I am rather on their side than the side of those who think that we should dress as an end in itself and flash our clothes and watches and wallets and so forth about in an attempt to impress others with our so-called 'style', which is really bumptiousness: there is too much bumptiousness in this world and far too many clowns and bullies controlling mankind: 'Colonel' Gadaffi is only one of the bullies. There are plenty of others; as indeed there are plenty of clowns: starting with the leaders of the current British government, and that nasty little twister Berlusconi.

It seems to me that the world has lost its way, along with its faith in any Creator and too often substitutes an 'appreciation' of the faux style peddled by  miserable, pig-ignorant 'celebrities' for an appreciation of true style.

Connie Francis

When I was a student, sometimes we used to stand on the benches, after dinner, and sing Strangers in The Night. For a long time, I thought that Frank Sinatra gave the world the best rendering of this song. Then I heard Nancy Sinatra's rendering - and realized that I was wrong. However, recently, I heard Connie Francis, singing it in Spanish, and realized that I was wrong twice. Please listen and revel in it. It's on YouTube but I cannot create a link, for some reason.

Aftermath of The Riots And A Sign of The Times

A friend has sent me the news that, out of a street of shops in a riot zone: a one hundred year old business (unspecified) was burned out; the sports' goods, electronic and mobile 'phone shops were looted and the bookshops were left untouched. Maybe the looters did not know what the books were for and, rather than court a possible clash with the supernatural, the rioters left them well alone. Ah! Baroness Thatcher; Messrs Major, Blair and Broom; Cameron and What'syername: what a miserable mess you have generated, you morons.

The UK is Disintegrating

In the wake of the economic crisis and the de facto bankruptcy of several banks (as well as the continuing appalling running of banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland), and against a background of hidden but festering resentments, arising from class and race, the actual meltdown of the UK begins with uncontrollable violence and looting. Economically, morally and socially it is finished and a pair of wets such as Cameron and Clegg are not, after all, made of the stuff to make a difference.

'Ye Olde Blighty' is probably about to join "The Glory that was Greece; the Grandeur that was Rome."