I recently had an argument with an acquaintance. What I wrote on matters of applied art was fair enough. But the subjects of fashion and cladding went against the grain. He accused me of wanting to make the whole world uniform. What would then become of our glorious national costumes?

Here he grew lyrical. He remembered his childhood, remembered the glorious Sundays in the little Styrian town, remembered the country folk gathering in ceremonial garb to go to church. How magnificent, how lovely, how quaint! How different things are now! Only old people still wore the old costumes. The young were already aping city folk. I would be better off trying to win the people back to the old costumes. That would be the task of someone culturally literate.

‘So you liked the old costumes?’ I asked him. ‘Certainly.’ ‘So you would like those costumes to be preserved for all time?’ ‘That is my deepest wish!’

Now I had him where I wanted him. ‘You know,’ I said to him, ‘that you are a very mean and egoistic person. You know that you want to exclude a whole class, a great and glorious class, our farming class, from all the blessings of civilization. And why? So that, when you go to the countryside, your eye is quaintly titillated! Why do you not walk around like that yourself? Ah, you owe them your profoundest gratitude. But you demand of other people that they act as accessories in the landscape, so as not to insult your intoxicated artist’s eye. Yes, you go there and act the yokel for the councillor of commerce who wants to enjoy the unadulterated Alps. The farmer has a higher mission to fulfil than that of stylishly populating the mountains for the summer trippers. The farmer – the saying is nearly a hundred years old – is not a toy!’

Even I myself must admit that I am very fond of the old costumes. But that doesn’t give me the right to demand of my neighbour that he wear them for my sake. The costume, clothing frozen in a particular form that does not develop any further, is always the sign that its wearer has given up changing his situation. The costume is the embodiment of resignation. It says: I have to give up trying to win myself a better position in my struggle for existence. When the farmer was still fighting, fresh and cheerful, when he was filled with the most naive hopes, it would not have occurred to him in his wildest dreams to wear the same frock coat that his grandfather had worn. The Middle Ages, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Renaissance did not cling rigidly to sartorial forms. The difference between the clothing of the city-dweller and the peasant was caused only by their different ways of life. City-dweller and peasant related to one another in those days as city-dweller and farmer do today.

Then the peasant lost his independence. He became a bondservant. And bondservant he had to remain, he and his children’s children. Why should he make an effort to rise above his surroundings by changing his outfit, by introducing a change to his clothing? There was no point. The peasant class became a caste, and the peasant was cut off from any chance of escaping that caste. Nations that have divided themselves into castes all have one trait in common: rigidly clinging for centuries to national costumes.

Then the peasant was freed. But only outwardly. Inwardly he still feels inferior to the city-dweller. He is the master. The peasant still has centuries of servitude in his limbs.

But now a new generation comes along. It has declared war on national costumes. And it has a strong ally: the threshing machine. Wherever this turns up, the quaint clobber is finished. It now goes where it belongs: in the fancy-dress hire shop.

These are heartless words. But they have to be said, because in Austria, out of fake sentimentality, associations have even been formed with a view to maintaining the mark of the peasant’s servitude. And yet we have even greater need for associations that do the reverse. Because even we city-dwellers are still a long way away from the clothing that the great civilized peoples wear. Outwardly we look quite passable. In those terms we keep up with the others. We can, if we are dressed by one of the premier Viennese tailors, even be mistaken for civilized Europeans in London, New York and Peking. But woe to us if the surface of our clothing were to fall away one piece at a time and we were left standing there in our underwear! One would become aware that we only put on our European clothing as a kind of disguise, because beneath it we still wear the national costume.

But either-or. We have to make our minds up. Whether we have the courage of the conviction to separate ourselves from the rest of humanity and put on a national costume. Or we stick with the rest of humanity and dress ourselves as they do. But wanting outwardly to act the part of the modern civilized human, and pulling the wool over the eyes of others with those items of clothing that are not accessible to strange eyes, does not indicate an elegant way of thinking. While in our outer clothing a whole world separates us from the countryman, our underclothes, our underwear, is no different from that of the peasant. In Hungary they wear the same underpants as the Csikos, in Vienna the same as the peasant from Lower Austria. What is it that distinguishes our underwear so very clearly from the other civilized nations?

It is the fact that we are at least fifty years behind the stage that England has fought to reach, between machine-knitted underwear and woven underwear. In our outer clothing we have not been able to show any revolutions over the course of this century. They are all the more radical in underclothing. A hundred years ago we still wrapped ourselves entirely in linen. But in the course of this century we have gradually set about granting the machine-knitting producer his place again. We proceeded gradually, from body part to body part. We started with the feet and worked our way up. At present the whole of the lower body belongs to the knitter, while the torso must still put up with the singlet being disguised by a linen shirt.

They started with the feet. We occupy that position as well. We too wear socks rather than foot-cloths. But we still wear linen underpants, an item of clothing that has already died out in England and America.

If a man from the Balkan states who still wears foot-cloths were to come to Vienna and look for an underwear shop to buy the footwear common in his country, he would receive the ungraspable information that foot-cloths are not on sale. But he could probably order one. Yes, what do the people here wear? Socks. Socks? That is very uncomfortable. And too hot in summer. Does no one wear foot-cloths any more? Oh yes, the very old people. But the young people find foot-cloths uncomfortable, in fact. The good fellow from the Balkan states then decides with a heavy heart to give socks a go. In so doing, he has reached a new stage in human civilization.

Philippopel¹⁷ is to Vienna as Vienna is to New York. So there let us try to buy – not foot-cloths, they wouldn’t even understand us – but linen underpants. I must ask the reader to read the previous dialogue through again, changing the words ‘man from the Balkan states’ to ‘Viennese’ and ‘foot-cloths’ to ‘canvas underpants’. Because it would play out in exactly the same way. I speak from my own experience. The original dialogue would take place, with only ‘foot-cloths’ needing the context of Vienna in order to make sense.

Let anyone who finds the woven fabrics more comfortable than the machine-knitted ones go on wearing them. Because it would be nonsense to impose on people a cultural form that does not correspond to their innermost nature. The fact is that at the peak of civilization linen becomes uncomfortable. So we must wait until we Austrians also feel their discomfort. The increasing prevalence of physical exercise, of sport, which comes from England, also leads to an aversion to linen underwear. Starched shirt fronts, collars and sleeves are also detrimental to sport. The unstarched shirt-front is the predecessor of the unstarched collar. Both have the task only of paving the way for the singlet and the flannel shirt.

But tricot underwear contains a great danger. It is in fact meant only for people who wash for their own sake. But many Germans see putting on machine-knitted underwear as a licence not to have to wash. But all inventions designed to spare washing come from Germany. Germany gave us celluloid underwear, false shirt fronts, ties with matching dickey. From Germany comes the theory that washing is bad for the health, and that one can wear a tricot shirt for a year – as long as those around do not seriously refuse to tolerate it. For the American, the German is entirely incomprehensible without a gleaming white but fake shirt front. That is proved by the caricature of the German concocted by the American satirical papers. The German can be recognized by the tip of the shirt front, which always sticks out of his waistcoat. According to the American caricaturists, only one other class of people wears the false shirt front: the tramp, the man of the road.

The fake shirt front is really not a symbol of angelic purity. It is all the more pleasant that this piece of clothing, sad for the state of civilization of any nation, is to be found in every section of the exhibition in which our best tailors have shown their work. That moves the whole elegant exposition, in which the names Ebenstein, Keller and Uzel appear, in which one of the most elegant fashion magazines has exhibited, down a few notches. The gentlemen should have steered well clear.

We know the shop of the ‘English Fleet’ (chief supplier E. H. Berger). Another two of our very first ‘outfitters’ exhibited: Berecz & Löbl and Goldmann & Salatsch. The latter firm in particular has introduced a very new type of business to Vienna, one that is already taken for granted in other cities:

Tailors and outfitters. Their exposition also contains what their name suggests. One interesting thing in it is the sheep’s wool material, which, thanks to its combination with reindeer hairs, can keep the person wearing it afloat, an Austrian invention designed to provoke a revolution in water-sport clothing.

The outfitter stocks everything to do with men’s suits. His task is not an easy one. With every article he sells, his responsibility to the customer is to create an elegant impression. We may demand of a well-run fashion shop that no object chosen at random should be tasteless or inelegant. The outfitter can make no concessions to the great mass. The excuse that other tastes must be accommodated must never be used by a shop of the first rank. He must never be wrong. If he has made a mistake, he has an obligation to his customer to remove the item in question from his shop. Truly, no easy task. Because it is hard to acquire a leading role in the fashion world, but even harder to maintain that role. And yet only the smallest part of the goods is produced in his workshop. He is a trader first and foremost. He is to the craftsman what the collector or the director of an art gallery is to the artist. They too have the obligation to select the best from the abundance of created material. That is intellectual work enough to fill a human life.

We must express this thought when we are swamped by anonymous messages usually voicing the ‘suspicion’ that someone I have discussed favourably does not produce his goods himself. Even if I spotted something along those lines, I could not set about tracing the provenance of the goods. I am not a detective. But I am indifferent to where they were produced. The main thing is that the businessman is capable of providing these goods with this degree of workmanship. Whether he has his own workshop or farms the work out to a number of different workshops is irrelevant to the objects. For my observations concern only him.

The exposition of the textile fabric producers also contains excellent goods. One seeks in vain, however, for white machine-made underwear, the only correct kind. As we know, these days even our ladies wear white and bluish-white stockings, or are these perhaps only worn in Vienna?

Maison Spitzer displays ladies’ underwear of great accomplishment. Schostal & Härtlein is also making outstanding work. That one finds so many pre-knotted ties for women is saddening. Even on men these loops of cloth look very vulgar. The necktie that shows a knot or a bow at the front and is held together at the back belongs in the same category as paper underwear and fake gemstones. I will not even mention those ties that are tied twice around the neck, and which seek to achieve this beautiful effect with the help of a piece of cardboard covered with silk material, and some kind of ‘patent’: the favourite necktie of our suburban sophisticate. But the fact that our Viennese girls and women use such surrogates instead of tying their own ties shows that the much-vaunted Viennese elegance is dying out. I wish there were a shop in Vienna whose owner could proudly answer to anyone who asked for a pre-knotted tie: Pre-knotted ties? No! We don’t stock them!