Dashing!

Just like socks, dashes can come in singles and in pairs. And just like a single sock, a single dash is rather confounding, it being the harbinger of something surprising, an abrupt turn, a sudden digression, a mental leap.

If you need a suit, go to Men’s Wearhouse. If you need a bespoke suit — well, first a definition of bespeaking.

Alan Feuer slightly digresses to explain an essential term before he plunges into his subject — $ 5,000 suits.

"It means a garment has been made to your specifications, that it’s been spoken about,” said Bruce Cameron Clark, an Englishman in exile who for 15 years has indulged such speech at his custom suit shop — Bruce Cameron Clark, Bespoke Clothier — on Lexington Avenue and 71st Street. “A bespoke suit was created only for you. It has your name on it.”

A phrase that provides more information, an accessory of sorts, is slipped in between a pair of dashes instead of commas here to enhance clarity since the phrase — or rather the shop's name — itself already contains a comma.

In Mr. Clark’s case, those names have been impressively eclectic over the years… Sitting lankly in an armchair near the window, Mr. Clark recalled, “Elton John got married in one of my shirts” — it was a short-sleeved job, with white wing collars and a vertical stripe — “when he still thought he was straight.”

The pair of dashes here suits perfectly to set off the description of Elton John’s bespoke shirt. Appositive phrases, however, should – well, be phrases, not clauses. Thus, the writer should have omitted the two words “it was.”

Of course, the world has changed, sartorially speaking, since Mr. Clark arrived in New York in 1995, fresh from Savile Row and an apprenticeship with the legendary tailor Tommy Nutter (claim to fame: three of four Beatles wore Nutter suits on the cover of “Abbey Road”) — which perhaps is why Mr. Clark’s shop still seems so traditionally English.

An aside, a thought kind of socked away, is also preceded by a single dash. That Mr. Clark’s shop is so British is not an essential part of the main subject but the author's afterthought.

It is a small, bright, second-story parlor with hardwood floors, a full-length mirror and sample garments — a thorn-proof hunting jacket, for example — hanging from the walls. There is a cabinet case of fabrics: English cottons, Madras plaids. You would not be surprised to glance up from your reading copy of “A History of Men’s Fashion” to find a banker in a homburg — and behind him, Mick Jagger — at the door.

The pairs of dashes around “a thorn-proof hunting jacket, for example” and “and behind him,[sic!] Mick Jagger” provide the sheathing for a description and a parenthetical element respectively. The dashes emphasize the insertions, make them stand out more than a pair of commas would do.

This casual — ” he stopped before saying “scourge.” But, of course, he didn’t have to.

Feuer’s last dash shrouds a missing word. Similarly, a dash can stand for omitted letters, for example to disguise names or profanities (maybe somebody thinks that Mr. C— is a b— snob?). Note that no space is left between the remaining letter and the dash.