My Years With Proust - Day 448

   "Why, what have you been talking about?" said Albertine, astonished at the solemn, paternal tone which M. de Charlus had suddenly adopted.

   "About Balzac," the Barton hastily replied, "and you are wearing this evening the very same costume as the Princesse de Cadignan, not the first, which she wears at the dinner-party, but the second."

   This coincidence was due to the fact that, in choosing Albertine's clothes, I drew my inspiration from the taste that she had acquired thanks to Elstir, who had a liking for that sort of sobriety that might have been called British had it not been tempered with a softness that was purely French.  As a rule the clothes he preferred offered to the eye a harmonious combination of grey tones, like the dress of Diane de Cadignan.  M. de Charlus was almost the only person capable of appreciating Albertine's clothes at their true value; his eye detected at a glance what constituted their rarity, their worth; eh wold never had mistaken one material for another, and could always recognise the maker.  but he preferred - in women - a little more brightness and colour than Elstir would allow.  And so, that evening, Albertine glanced at me with a half-smiling, half-apprehensive expression, wrinkling her little pink cat's nose.  Meeting over her skirt of grey crepe de chine, her jacket of grey eheviot did indeed give the impression that she was dressed entirely in grey.  But, signing to me to help her, because her puffed sleeves needed to be smoothed down or pulled up for her to get into or out of her jacket, she took it off, and as these sleeves were of a Scottish plaid in soft colours, pink, pale blue, dull green, pigeon's breast, the effect was as though in a grey sky a rainbow had suddenly appeared.  And she wondered whether this would find favour with M. de Charlus.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 1089

I don't know if I have anything particularly profound to add to this segment, although I'm having a very clear Jimmy Stewart Vertigo moment.

Judy: Couldn't you like me, just me the way I am? When we first started out, it was so good; we had fun.  And . . . and then you started in on the clothes. Well, I'll wear the darn clothes if you want me to, if, if you'll just, just like me.

Scottie: The color of your hair . . .

Judy: Oh, no!

Scottie: Judy, please, it can't matter to you.

Proust recounts Marcel's role in choosing Albertine's clothes: "This coincidence was due to the fact that, in choosing Albertine's clothes, I drew my inspiration from the taste that she had acquired thanks to Elstir, who had a liking for that sort of sobriety that might have been called British had it not been tempered with a softness that was purely French."  Is this an expression of the unquestioned patriarchy that pervades so much of Remembrance of Things Past (I'm dressing you because you are something I own) or just Marcel's jealousy which will end up with Albertine little more than a prisoner?  This seems to happen less today (although this may have always just been a class issue anyway) except in the bedroom where men still make very specific Victoria's Secret demands.  It matters not what what I'm helping you put on, but rather what I'm helping you take off.  Or is that an expression of the point above - is it still about the ruling patriarchy and a man's desire to dress/undress a woman because he owns her?  It can't matter to you . . .