"I discovered in the shirt a thousand details of execution that had a great chance of remaining unnoticed, like those orchestral parts to which the composer has given all his care, although they are never to reach the ears of the public; or in the sleeves of the jacket folded over my arm I saw, I gazed at at length, for pleasure or out of politeness, some exquisite detail, [...] like those Gothic sculptures of a cathedral hidden on the reverse side of a balustrade eighty feet high, as perfect as the bas-reliefs of the great porch, but which no one had ever seen until, by chance during a journey, an artist had obtained permission to climb and walk high in the sky, to overlook the whole city, between the two towers."

The attention Marcel Proust pays to clothing in his novels goes beyond a mere taste for detail: it reveals a unique way of amplifying reality.

In Swann's Way, an item of clothing thus becomes the starting point for an almost infinite contemplation. The slightest fold, the most discreet seam, rise into a sensitive and meticulous construction, like a musical work or an invisible architecture.

To Proust, clothing is never incidental: it fully participates in the revelation of characters, where style, memory, and perception compose a portrait of exceptional richness.