After an absolutely splendid week at the Hotel Karia Princess, where I have put on about a hundred pounds in weight due to being forced, forced I tell you, to live in total luxury, it's all austerity back here at Maturin Towers. The treadmills of my local gym will shortly be taking a ferocious pounding as your rather heftier correspondent knuckles back down to a decent fitness regime, to get his three-mile run time back under the British Army's regulation target of 27 minutes.
That's going to be tough, as I'm starting out from 40 minutes, but I now have an added incentive.
On the final evening of the conference, I thanked Professor Hoppe for his hospitality and for the invitation to this incredible conference, where swapping anecdotes with Professor Robert Higgs or handing a beer to Professor Guido Hülsmann were just par for the course.
Anyhow, back to that incentive. After thanking Professor Hoppe, he appraised me with those steel-rimmed penetrating eyes and said:
"If you come again, perhaps next time you will dress a little better."There was a heavy stress on the word "If", and although the comment was perhaps partially in jest, there was a definite stiletto feel to the words.
I had actually worried about this on the first evening where I turned up at the reception in full casual Englishman mode, to find a room of men and women dressed in summer suits and cocktail dresses, all looking as though they had just stepped off some rather expensive yachts. However, short of nipping out and rustling up an entire wardrobe of clothes in an Aegean holiday town, I was pretty much stuck with what I had in my suitcase.
In my day-job I usually wear the compulsory City garb of a tailored grey or blue suit, Jermyn Street shirts, and ties in various hues of cream, navy blue, and burgundy if visiting a client, plus black leather shoes and black cotton socks - It's generally a relief to cast this armour off, once outside the Metropolis.
However, after having attended my first Austrian-based conference, I will be fore-armed next time with the knowledge of what the civilised Austrian man is supposed to be wearing when he attends such a thing. And if you are going to wear some decent summer suits, you really ought to get your physique in the necessary trim to carry it off properly.
If of course, I ever get invited to another one! :-)
2 comments:
Sounds interesting!
The Austrian equivalent of the Bilderberg Conference :)
You could always follow the Mises Institute's style tips:
http://mises.org/story/3372
(Not sure I agree with them though...)
Yes, I read that a few months ago, but obviously failed to take it in. I also think hats will have a hard time ever coming back, and bow ties I think can only be worn if you're the cleverest person in the room.
The second person wearing a bow tie too often comes across as being an angry lunatic, who is upset that the other bow-tie wearer has dared to upstage them.
BTW, there's a great article on ties which really helped sort my wardrobe out a while back, and helped me clear out some terrible ties I had from my IT days:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kramer/kramer17.html
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