One might read the statement by a Customs spokeswoman, citing concerns of “moral turpitude” relating to his past arrests in England for drug possession and prostitution — which in his book, “Dandy in the Underworld” (Harper Perennial), Mr. Horsley asserts that he has both solicited and proffered — and think that the United States was protecting itself.
To Mr. Horsley, who has in the past entered the country without incident, the recent fracas arose less from his past indulgences than a current one. In short, his very tall top hat.
“It’s a stovepipe,” he said, referring to the subspecies made famous seven score and seven years ago by Abraham Lincoln. “They asked my girlfriend, ‘Why is he wearing that hat?’ And she told them, ‘Because it wouldn’t fit in his suitcase.’ ”
Back home in England, he noted dryly that he had refrained from wearing his usual makeup and nail polish on the flight so as not to attract undue scrutiny — merely a three-piece suit by the Savile Row tailor Richard Anderson, a pink-and-gold-braid tie, a black velvet topcoat and fur-trimmed black leather gloves.
“One of the first questions they asked me was, ‘What have you got inside that hat?’ I said, ’My head.’ ”
...“I don’t see things as good or evil,” he said. “I just see them as either witty or boring.” As the remark suggests, he is so quick with a Wildean epigram that a reporter’s real worry is not whether what he says is true but how many times he has said it. In either case, as he would doubtlessly point out, the way to make a stand is by striking a pose.
“Dandyism to me is being real in an artificial way,” he said. “I have everything tailor-made: my shoes, my clothes, my personality.”
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