I think Twain was both right and wrong. Yes, clothes do make the man—at least in the eyes of a world often content with surfaces. Apparel can confer upon the wearer an almost sacramental grace, lending form and definition to the vagueness of personality, much like how stained glass lends colour to sunlight. There is a certain power in a well-fitted coat or a carefully chosen dress; they are not mere fabrics but symbols—tokens in the economy of social esteem. And in this, Twain is not mistaken: society does bow, however unconsciously, to the heraldry of the wardrobe.
Yet he is also, in another sense, curiously blind. For if clothing is the outward presentation, it can also become the veil that conceals. Indeed, nakedness—though often scorned or trivialised in modern discourse—is not merely the absence of fabric but the presence of something older, something more primal and unmediated. It is not the lewdness of the exhibitionist that I mean, but the innocent vulnerability of Eden—where man first stood without shame, clothed only in the gaze of his Maker.
Sartre captured this poignantly when he wrote, “People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?” One cannot help but feel the pathos in his words—a kind of social orphanhood. Yet his statement contains a truth too often ignored: that our identity is not formed in solitude but refracted endlessly through the perceptions of others. Without these social mirrors, we become less certain of our own outlines.
And here, perhaps, lies the real tension: between the clothed self, tailored to fit the expectations of society, and the naked self, who stands apart, stripped of ornament and therefore capable of honesty. The monk in his cell, the child in his backyard, the man before his God—all are, in their own way, naked. And from such nakedness often arises not shame but freedom—a liberation from the tyranny of appearances.
If clothes make the man, it is only because man is already, by nature, something being made—formed not only by his hands and habits, but also by the silent language of cloth and colour. But let us never forget that under every suit of armour lies a beating heart, and beneath every robe of silk, the same shivering flesh that yearns, not to be seen as splendid, but to be known as true.
Yet he is also, in another sense, curiously blind. For if clothing is the outward presentation, it can also become the veil that conceals. Indeed, nakedness—though often scorned or trivialised in modern discourse—is not merely the absence of fabric but the presence of something older, something more primal and unmediated. It is not the lewdness of the exhibitionist that I mean, but the innocent vulnerability of Eden—where man first stood without shame, clothed only in the gaze of his Maker.
Sartre captured this poignantly when he wrote, “People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?” One cannot help but feel the pathos in his words—a kind of social orphanhood. Yet his statement contains a truth too often ignored: that our identity is not formed in solitude but refracted endlessly through the perceptions of others. Without these social mirrors, we become less certain of our own outlines.
And here, perhaps, lies the real tension: between the clothed self, tailored to fit the expectations of society, and the naked self, who stands apart, stripped of ornament and therefore capable of honesty. The monk in his cell, the child in his backyard, the man before his God—all are, in their own way, naked. And from such nakedness often arises not shame but freedom—a liberation from the tyranny of appearances.
If clothes make the man, it is only because man is already, by nature, something being made—formed not only by his hands and habits, but also by the silent language of cloth and colour. But let us never forget that under every suit of armour lies a beating heart, and beneath every robe of silk, the same shivering flesh that yearns, not to be seen as splendid, but to be known as true.
