Academics Who Dress Well

Gary Cooper as Professor Bertram Potts in Ball of Fire (1941)

Loved this aside from Russell Jacoby’s recent profile of Paul Piccone:

Another leftist Italian-American of working-class origins coincidentally chaired my department at Rochester. Eugene Genovese, the historian of American slavery, also dressed to the nines. He once addressed us motley graduate students, mainly from New York City and its suburbs, as we clomped about in work boots, blue jeans, and work shirts: “You think the workers like what you are wearing?” he sneered. “They despise it and you.” He fingered his own fine threads. “This is what they like. This is what they would wear if they could.”

The point is that academics need not dress in a slovenly manner; indeed, many academics dress very well, or at least they used to. This is something of a hobbyhorse of mine.