Word: tweeds
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...James Walker, 32, English novelist, Angry Young Man. Actually he is dim and aging, and resentfully married to a dowdy, motherly, working nurse. Life, as seen from a dull suburb of industrial Nottingham, makes him not angry so much as itching with vague discomfort, as does his hairy tweed suit, which "makes him look as if he had been rolled over by a sheep." He has chronic spiritual snuffles. His novels are about "sensitive provincial types who live far away from where things happen...
...Benedict Arnold seems to offer Walker an escape from the inconsequence and stuffiness of his existence. By rights, he should feel snootily superior to the joint, pouch his fee, and go back to Nottingham. Instead, the Creative Writing Fellow has a fling at, or with, life. He sheds his tweed for seersucker, tries to shed his wife by cable, swims by night in the buff, grapples with faculty wives, and plays madly on bongo drums. He has no worries except that he is required to sign a loyalty oath...
...every clothing manufacturer has always known, flawless fabrics do not exist. Tweed is good in the winter but bad in the stretch, cashmere is cozy to the touch but droopy to the eye, and silk has lots of life but little body. Recently, however, a technical breakthrough called "bonding" has promised to free the industry from some of the limitations of its own materials...
...Buckle. Bonding has also opened new vistas for hard-to-manage materials. Mohair jackets and coats, infamous for bagging and stretching, can now be stabilized with a simple backing of cotton sheeting or tricot. Loose-weave hopsack and tweed suits no longer sag in the seat and buckle at the knee, keep their shape as well as an all-Dacron suit. Lace, once too fragile for anything but brides and banquet tables, now can be used for all-purpose coats and dresses. Women's heavy knitted suits and dresses, often made double-thick to prevent stretching and wrinkling...
While thousands of revelers swayed to the strains of Auld Lang Syne and The Star-Spangled Banner, prim ladies in tweed suits feverishly uprooted all the chrysanthemums recently planted for a permanent park, stuffed them into their pocketbooks or pinned them onto their hats. Tipsy men wantonly ripped signs from buildings, kicked over trash baskets, waded in the Unisphere fountain, and shinned up the 20-ft. poles near the United Nations Plaza to capture the flags. One man completely gutted a statue of King Tut near the Egyptian Pavilion, another attacked a copy of an ancient vase outside the Greek...