Symbolic Usage To Represent Wealth
The wearing of spats is often used as symbolic shorthand to represent wealth, eccentricity or both. Fictional characters such as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, P. G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, Walt Disney's Scrooge McDuck, Jean de Brunhoff's Babar the Elephant, Jiggs from the comic strip Jiggs and Maggie, Rich Uncle Pennybags the iconic man from the Monopoly board game, the Sixth Doctor from Doctor Who and Bustopher Jones from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats, among others, have been depicted as wearing spats. In Some Like It Hot, the mob boss is called "Spats" Colombo, because he regularly wears spats. In some cases, these depictions occur long after spats ceased to be a normal part of everyday menswear: for instance The Penguin from Batman is drawn wearing spats along with a suit with tails. Similarly, Irving Berlin's song "Puttin' on the Ritz" mentions spats along with a variety of other elements of formal clothing that were common when it was written.
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