As one who enjoys dressing for pleasure I have always been very intrigued by seeing anyone else in the street who appears to dress in a way which is non-standard and looks as though it can only be attributes to a fascination for being different.
I very often carry a camera with me and though I have often just missed something really exciting which I have glimpsed in the distance, I have still managed to build up a collection of two or three hundred pictures many of them capes, which are my particular love, in all shapes, sizes and designs. They are not by any means all in rubber or leather, because although these are my favourites I still get a great deal of pleasure from seeing a ground length swirling cape in any material especially if it has a hood. My own collection of capes is about 15 at the moment, although I have had many through my hands over the years. As I once said in a letter to you a year or so ago, I am always so disappointed and puzzled that so many unusual rubber and other garments are sold by the specialist houses and yet so few are ever seen being worn in public.
Hundreds of ground length rubber coats and capes must have been sold and yet I think over many years I have not seen more than about half a dozen being worn. I try whenever possible to play my part and I remember corresponding with someone I had not met who told me that he had been excited to see on Liverpool Street Station someone wearing a shiny black PVC blouse and long skirt under a long rubber cape. I knew he was telling the truth because it was me.
I am enclosing a picture from my collection of people wearing clothes which give me pleasure to see.
– J.G. (Surrey).