Like all members of what used to be called Generation X, I grew up with a fascination for The Princess Bride. Most of us still to this day can repeat much of its dialogue line by line, even Andre the Giant’s stuff that took dozens of viewings to figure out. Today, many dark intervening years have passed since those arrested adolescent days, years whose perspective brings the film closer to the original flawed fairy tale by William Goldman. After all, viewers of the American version of House of Cards can conclude that in the end Buttercup did end up with Prince Humperdinck, sadly. Still, watching The Princess Bride can conjure up some escapist childish joy…along with one abiding minor mystery. Early in the film, Mandy Patinkin’s Spanish swordsman Iñigo Montoya tells the story of his father’s murder for a custom sword made for a six-fingered man, a sword that Montoya has used since childhood to become perhaps the greatest swordsman who ever lived. How did the best swordsman in the world learn on and use a weapon whose balance and grip were made for someone of very different anatomy?
I was reminded of this minor, trifling conundrum in looking at pictures of many of the men who pass for past paragons of style - real men, not the pinned and posed fit models who appear in brand PR. Clothing advertising - the glossy photographs of models posing in a brand’s clothing - is a sort of theatre to showcase clothing, while clothes that fit – one of the reasons to have custom clothing – are an advantage in the theatre of life. However, fit itself is based on another set of snapshots: virtual snapshots, perhaps, but snapshots nonetheless of the wearer’s proportions and posture at the times of measurement and fittings.
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