In Telemachus Mulligan dons "his primrose
waistcoat," and in Proteus Stephen thinks
of his companion metonymically as a "primrose doublet."
The color of the vest, a light yellow, coheres with Mulligan's
sartorial choice of a dressinggown, and it may
symbolically reinforce Stephen's judgment of him as a "heretic" who would
deny the serious value of
Stephen's art.
What Americans call the "vest" in a three-piece suit, Britons
typically call a “waistcoat.” Edwardian gentlemen wore
waistcoats with five or more buttons that closed high up on
the chest. In Lotus Eaters, as he stands up from his
pew in the church, Bloom is mildly
scandalized to realize, "Were those two buttons of my
waistcoat open all the time?" Waistcoat fabric could
either match that of a coat of contrast with it. The color of
Mulligan’s garment marks him as a bit of a dandy, and as
someone who is comfortable with elegant British customs: pale
yellow waistcoats have been fashionable in England since the
18th century. Stephen's term "doublet" reflects his interest
in the earlier Elizabethan period, when gentlemen wore short,
tight-fitting padded jackets, either with or without sleeves.
Much as Stephen thinks of Buck as a doublet, the narrative
often tracks his progress through the day in terms of the
appearances of this colorful vest. Mulligan shows up in Scylla
and Charybdis thus: "Primrosevested he greeted
gaily with his doffed Panama as with a bauble."
Dining with Haines in the D.B.C. in Wandering Rocks, "Buck
Mulligan's primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter." In
Oxen of the Sun he is "the young blood in the
primrose vest," and later in that chapter "the figure of
Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide
brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance
and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan."
The gay clothes of the Buck, then, define him just as sharply
as the somber clothes of Stephen and Bloom define them.
