lThe object comes from Antiquity, like many contemporary accessories. However, we will have to wait until the 18th.my century, and Louis XVI, so that the pocket square takes more or less the form (and name) that we know it today. Or a square, made of silk, folded in different ways according to tastes and fashions, and kept in a jacket pocket, most often at chest height. Aesthetic above all, the handbag became the accessory par excellence for gentlemen of the 19th century.my century, during the arrival of the modern costume.
In reality, it is less useless than it seems and says a lot about whoever wears it. Fashion not only dresses bodies; says, means, imposes. “Clothes no longer serve to cover up, cover up or decorate, but to signify,” explains Roland Barthes in his famous Fashion system (1967). Wearing a pocket square not only signals to those you meet that you pay close attention to details, but also that you are master of your appearance.
It is also for this reason that, in literature, it is the fetish of elegant people and other dandies. Among them, Frantz de Galais, one of the protagonists of the Great Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier (1913); Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray’s mentor in Oscar Wilde’s novel (1890); or even Jay Gatsby, decadent millionaire always dressed to the nines portrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the great gatsby (1925).
Assert yourself, going against the current of trends
The small and big screen are not left out, the British spies in the saga king man (2014), dressed in distinguished three-piece suits designed on Savile Row, to Don Draper, cynical publicist and hero of the series. mad Men (2007), with a gray suit and white pocket square.
We could then consider the cover as the symbol of a bygone world, that of society dinners and a somewhat old-fashioned masculine elegance. However, it could almost become the symbol of a certain stylistic resistance. While the archetypes of virility, from the cowboy to the worker, Once again they are at the forefront of men’s fashion, choosing to wear a pocket square with your jacket also allows you to assert yourself, going against the current trends and imposed patterns. Escaping the limitations of society by cultivating uniqueness is what the French doctor and philosopher Henri Laborit recommended in his essay: The praise of flight (1981).
