“No man in modern times has dared to dress as he pleased, except Oscar Wilde…”
The commentary below appeared in a fashion issue of Life magazine in 1916. It is styled as the “manly confession” of a sentiment still so unmanly that its exemplar was Oscar Wilde, sixteen years after his death.
Unsurprisingly, it appeared above an amusingly transparent pseudonym in keeping with the light-hearted tone of the magazine.
And yet, given its reference to the “craven hisses” that greeted Wilde’s demise and the condemnation of cowardice, I suspect a little earnest belief lay hidden in plain sight.
Continue reading “A Manly Confession”