the last book I ever read (Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life by Ada Louise Huxtable, excerpt three)

from Frank Lloyd Wright (Penguin Lives) by Ada Louise Huxtable:

The figura he cut for the rest of his life was as important to his image as the history he invented; he dressed in the nineteenth-century manner of the artist as aesthete and dandy, and he played it to the hilt. Although today’s artists have dropped romantic apparel for the international youth uniform of jeans and T-shirts, preferably paint-spattered, architects continue to dress in a way to set them apart from the rest of the world—a fashion statement that matters as much as one about art. The sartorial journey has been from flowing tie, to bow tie, to no tie, to hip, trendy all-black, with the occasional personal statement of a distinctive scarf or hat. Wright progressed from his mother’s makeovers to custom tailoring; eventually, he set his own style, beyond fashion, in a cape and beret or brimmed porkpie hat, wielding an imperious cane as much for effect as for assistance, using it as pointer and weapon and coda to all of his critical remarks.