Jean COCTEAU (1889-1963). Autograph manuscript signed, Excentricités; 5 1/2 pages in-fol. on tracing paper torn from a spiral notebook. On fashion and its audacities, with erasures and corrections: "True eccentricities [...] almost always come from an infirmity that hides itself or from a weakness that accuses itself". He gives examples: the pregnant Empress Eugenie "invents the crinoline", Empress Elizabeth throws in the fan to hide a messy set of teeth, "leggy sleeves give the impression of bony shoulders [...] Byron and his clubfoot take advantage of underfoot pants [...] Caesar, bald, wears his hair in laurels. [...] And what of the gigantic wigs, gold fabrics and lace ruffles that cover the royal miseries"... Other eccentricities have other motives: the high cost of gunpowder forces Brummel to do away with it and "forces the Prince of Wales to keep his hair color intact. Another Prince of Wales rolls up his pants to avoid the mud of the paddock". Besides, "our dreary long pants were the prerogative of Oriental women. Men wore tunics or dresses". Cocteau prefers women "called ridiculous and living their dream [...] to the good taste of imitating one another. [...] Fashion moves us because it is doomed in advance and must die young. This is what makes its approach so insolent and so sad"...