On Philosophers and Fashion

One of our staff members who dabbles in philosophy is often seen bicycling around the neighborhood on a pink bike and his hair tied back into puffy pig tails. Mind you, he's straight. So what gives? In a diary entry Susan Sontag describes the French philosopher Jean Wahl who wrote a book on existentialism that was required reading at a LHG retreat two months back:

"Yesterday I went to my first Paris cocktail party, at Jean Wahl's...Wahl very much lived up to my expectations - a tiny slim birdlike old man with lank white hair and a thin mouth, terribly distracted and unkempt. Baggy black suit with three large holes in the rear end through which you could see his (white) underwear, and he'd just come from a late afternoon lecture - on Claudel - at the Sorbonne."

Can it be that philosophers and philosopher wannabees, given over to thought as their highest pursuit, have no time to spend on common courtesy?

Underwear is now obligatory at the LHG.