ACQUIRED TASTES by Peter Mayle (Bantam:...

ACQUIRED TASTES by Peter Mayle (Bantam: $9.95; 229 pp.). In this collection of GQ columns, Mayle describes the pleasures of going to a London tailor for a custom-made suit, to a bootmaker for handmade shoes, to a swank Paris haberdashery for tailored shirts. He recounts these posh thrills in the light-hearted style of his books about Provence, but the humor feels strained. In an era of limited resources, a celebration, however humorous, of such wretched excesses as a $1,000 Panama hat is apt to strike the reader as merely vulgar. These columns undoubtedly seemed more entertaining when they first appeared during the greed-minded ‘80s.