1. For many fashion-conscious Frenchmen, the triumph of the dark suit, imported from English, was a source of national shame and

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问题     1. For many fashion-conscious Frenchmen, the triumph of the dark suit, imported from English, was a source of national shame and aesthetic distress. "The sun’s rays have disappeared," wrote a Parisian journalist in 1869, "giving way to the lugubrious shadows in which our tailors envelop us. " Another writer was quick to envisage the demise of the hated costume: oh ... black suit... I won’t miss you, dull, banal black suit. May you disappear forever ... The black suit is dying ... the black suit is dead!     2. In one way, this prediction has been a staggering failure. The suit is alive and well. It is the costume of respectable dress for heads of state, businessmen, lawyers, criminal defendants, and in a form remarkably little changed from that of its Anglo-Parisian ancestor.
    3. What explains this remarkable stability? We begin with an undeniable fact: the suit looks wonderful. Flattering to almost any height and shape, moving easily and draping itself with grace as the wearer sits or rises. It is moreover thoroughly erotic. Whereas earlier fashions in male dress had drawn attention to the clothing itself, displaying the beauty of the costume rather than the man, the suit’s careful fit without adornments, on the other hand, emphasizes the unique grace of the individual body — indeed creates it, in the highest tailoring tradition.
    4. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the French bourgeoisie had attained sufficient social and economic influence to dictate the course of fashion. The bourgeoisie prided itself on the virtues of thrift, responsibility and self-control. The suit, dark, stiff and austere, expressed the new self-image of the bourgeois male; Bourgeois dress manifested bourgeois virtues. At the same time, to a remarkable degree, it effaced distinctions of class and rank. The rise of ready-to-wear clothing made it possible for an astute male to look elegant, and males began to look all the same when dressed for serious business.
    5. Just as nudity, for the Greeks, was the dress of personhood, so the suited man with his muted colors and matte finish became, paradoxically, more of a distinct moral character by virtue of his suited sameness to other males. His individual excellence thus became not less but more important against the simple background. At a formal evening occasion, when men wore suits and women each wore a different decorative gown, the women were individuated by their costumes and their souls were lost, whereas men were all soul so to speak, in their apparently monotonous black and white.
    Questions 1-5
    Directions: For questions 1-5, choose the best title for each paragraph from below. For each numbered paragraph(1-5), mark one letter(A-G)on your Answer Sheet. Do not mark any letter twice.
    A. The reason of suit’s stability
    B. Popularity of suit with French bourgeoisie
    C. Suit’s highlighting of moral character
    D. The proper occasions of wearing suit
    E. Frenchmen’s dislike of suit at the beginning
    F. The remarkable popularity of suit
    G. The origin of suit
Paragraph 4 ______

选项

答案B

解析 第4段说明了西服表达了男性中产阶级的新的自我形象。
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