It may perchance be questioned how long Britannia shall continue to rule the waves, but that she will ever cease to rule the fashions (the male fashions, I mean) is beyond the dreams of the boldest tailor or the maddest hatter.

Nevertheless, every rule has its exception and the Rule of Fashion is no exception to the rule that rules that every rule has its exception.

Every once in a while, since the invention of trousers, one or another English King has ruled that the human trouser-crease shall crown the Eastern and Western slope instead of the Northern and Southern exposure of the trouser-leg.

The law has never been considered by Parliament, for even the most radical House of Commons would balk at legislation so subversive of individual freedom, but by word of mouth, by courier, by post, by cable, by wireless, by airplane the edict has passed through all the nations and all the tribes to the trousermost ends of the earth.

And with what result?

With no result whatever. As far as it has been possible to push inquiry, it is safe to say that no trouserian biped bearing the mark of a lateral crease has been met with in any quarter of the Globe, or, for that matter, ever will be.

Strange, is it not, that the Tailors (proverbially the most complacent, not to say timid, of men) should, without any plan or program or fuss or demonstration of any sort, unite as one man—or rather one tailor—and refuse to obey the unlimited monarch of the male fashions of the civilized world. What is the explanation?

There are two explanations. One is Commercialism.

There is no profit to be made out of a change in the geography of a trouser-crease. It is purely a matter of self-determination on the part of the inhabitant of the trousers.

If there were no more financial profit to be gained by the remaking of the creases in the map of Europe than is to be got out of changing the trouser-crease, there would be no call for a League of Nations.

Should some inventive tailor (inventive tailor!) devise a crease that could be woven into the very being of the Trouser, then it would be a very different matter. The slightest variation in the location of the crease would cause an upheaval in the (I’m tired of the word Trouser)—in the “Pant” market that would mean millions of dollars to the trade.

As it is there is no money in it.

The other explanation is that the story of King Edward or King George creasing the Royal Pants in any but the usual place is made out of whole cloth.

But let us suppose for a moment (just for the fun of the thing) that in some possible scheme or caprice of creation there were such a thing as an inventive tailor.

And the inventive tailor invented a permanent trouser-crease and planted it on the Eastern and Western frontiers of the trouser-legs.

What would be the probable effect of the innovation on the trouser-bearing species of the human race?

In that process of advancing alternate trouser-legs we call locomotion do we not consciously, or unconsciously, follow in the direction indicated by the point of the crease?

What then would happen if the crease were transferred from the front to the sides?

The Crab alone of all living creatures exhibits in its legs a formation that corresponds to the human trouser-crease.

This ridge-like formation or crease occurs in the side of the Crab’s legs, not in the front as in the human species!

And the slogan of the Crab (as everyone knows) is, “First make sure you’re right and then go sideways.”

Shall we too go sideways?

Charlie Chaplin is the only human creature whose feet go East and West as his face travels North and his trouser-creases are so complicated it would be difficult to classify them.

Perhaps they hold the secret of his centrifugal orientation, his inexplicable fascination.

Who knows!