Mar 26
Have you ever heard anyone referred to as a “clothes horse”?
It refers to someone who enjoys, and is somewhat obsessed about, dressing fashionably.
I wonder where the term originates from. Most horses I see on TV are naked in the wild or if in the company of humans, dressed in leather harness, bridle and saddle.
I guess that counts as fashionable in certain circles…
I guess that clothes racks were called clothes horses because they are like horses in that they carry stuff, but they were designed with exclusive thought to clothes. If I were a marketer in the 1800s, I too might try to market a contraption with considerably more cost and less versatility than a clothes line by associating it with the valuable horse (don’t site this, I’m just making stuff up). I’m more certain that derogatorily calling someone a clothes horse is implying that they have no other use.
Makes sense. I never even thought about the angle of trying to associate it with an expensive commodity (horse). It’s like someone coming up with some random household appliance and citing “german engineering” to associate it with a tagline normally linked to expensive cars.