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clothes do make the man — the tailors are always puttering and fuming about trying to cover up the physical defects of the modern man
 

...Secretary Spring as usual being forced into the limelight at the start by declaring to a Sixth City writer that “a tailor is often temperamental and some of them too much so for their own good,” the writer continued: “The purpose of the Association, according to Spring, is to teach the tailors to be something more than temperamental and artistic.
      “Our good tailors today are coming up from the bench,” said he. “They know tailoring and have originality, but lack business ability. We want to teach them that.
      “It is not the artist who makes money, but the business man. The business man can hire an artist any day, but the artist can’t hire a business man — he’s too busy with his own business.”
      From which it will be seen that Spring is intensely practical. He cherishes no illusions about art for art’s sake in tailoring, holds no canons of idealism inviolate. Withal, he approves of and practices artistry in his business. No man of the three hundred or more wielders of shears who came to decide what the American man must wear this year, is more emphatic in denunciation of the cheap, shoddy and inartistic, than he.
      His horizon isn’t bounded by a tailor’s goose, the weave of a piece of cloth, or the cut of a coat. He has found time in life to be something of a philosopher.
      “It may be true that clothes do not make the man — although in one sense they do — but they don’t hinder anybody from being a man,” adding with a laugh, “Unless, of course, she’s a woman.
      “In a way clothes do make the man — the tailors are always puttering and fuming about trying to cover up the physical defects of the modern man. They talk about the modern woman wearing corsets, padding and resorting to all sorts of subterfuge to make her form seem beautiful.
      “Well, they need the extraneous aids to beauty — not one woman in 100 is beautiful without her clothes. Venuses di Milos are as rare as June days in January. Their feet are ugly, it is the silk stockings, the fine shoes, the upholstery that attract.
      “The men have nothing to brag about. Not one in 1,000 but has serious physical defects that the tailors must remedy. I don’t think the American man dresses well enough, in proportion to the way the women dress, but it’s their fault. The women spend immense sums on clothing. You see them going with men who are not even decently dressed, and the men stand for it.”
 

extracts from interview with Samuel H. Spring, Secretary, National Association of Merchant Tailors of America, in “Cleveland Chatter and Cartoons” —
an illustrated report of the Fourth Annual Convention of the National Association of Merchant Tailors of America, Cleveland, Ohio, February 11-13, 1913 —
in Gentlemen’s Fashions (“Formerly Advanced Fashions and The Custom Cutter”) 8:2 (March 1913) : 82-86 : link
 

20 January 2026