White Suit
The first time he made such an unusual appearance was in December 1906 when he appeared in a congressional hearing on the topic of literary copyright wearing a white three piece suit. While it was usual to wear white during summer and in warmer climates, doing so in December was quite the oddity and promptly attracted attention among the press and Clemens' peers - the incredible volume of articles published in the subsequent days on the spectacle of the white suit is evidence of this (see e.g. [MT lobbying for copyright changes] and [On MT’s white suit] which are part of this project, or e.g. “Mark Twain in White Amuses Congressmen,” New York Times, 8 Dec 1906, and “Mark Twain Bids Winter Defiance,” New York Herald, 8 Dec 1906).
Clemens affinity for this style of dress is attributed to multiple different reasons: his "enjoyment of shocking people" (Rasmussen et al. 2:940), his need to express his own freedom and individuality via his clothing (see Rasmussen et al. 2:650), and his desire for cleanliness and hygiene (see Rasmussen et al. 2:940). Clemens expressed some thoughts that especially support the last theory, recording that "I am considered eccentric because I wear white clothes both winter and summer. I am eccentric, then, because I prefer to be clean in the matter of raiment - clean in a dirty world; absolutely the only cleanly-clothed human being in all Christendom north of the Tropics." (Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain 3:253).
Clemens was dressed in a white suit for his funeral.
