Getty Images: Gay, John
T. S. Eliot, 1950.
A classic, complete three-piece suit and tie was the wardrobe of choice for T. S. Eliot, who was almost never seen wearing anything else. He buttoned up and strode out in impeccable style, looking elegant, gracious, and well-bred. His most famous poem, “The Waste Land,” was published in 1922, a time when the Jazz Age was beginning to encourage the young postwar generation to throw caution to the wind and live life with abandon. Eliot’s synthesis of the mood of the time in this poem would become one of the most complex and modern responses to the futility and disorientation of the era.