A little while later, he is skillfully trying out the same anecdote on Polly Allen Mellen, a fashion arbiter who is enough to out-doyenne any and all of the characters in Robert Altman's " Ready-to-Wear . " ( Comparisons between the two films are invidious but unavoidable.
22.
"No matter that the dark shirt with matching tie _ once linked to the Mafia _ has been seen on runways for years by everybody from Giorgio Armani to Hugo Boss to Calvin Klein . . . or that Tom Cruise, Nick Nolte and Tom Hanks have worn them to Hollywood soirees for years, " comments the tart-tongued fashion arbiter Mr . Blackwell.
23.
Like the fashion arbiters who raise some eminent lady above the annual best-dressed lists, PAW is retiring that poem's number, along with Robert Frost's " Road Not Taken " and " Mending Fences " ( in which the narrator's neighbor repeats, " Good fences make good neighbors " ) and Eliot's " Wasteland, " to make room for allusions on roads less traveled.
