a go-to-hell air and black number - what does this mean?
Here is an extract fron the book and I don't understand the sentence with "go-to-hell air" and "black number". there’s a go-to-hell air about it that doesn’t attend the prudent black number - what does it mean?
After extensive and really quite impressive research, John T. Molloy has discovered that in raincoat colors beige far outranks black, olive, or dark blue. The black raincoat proves to be, indeed, a highly trustworthy prole sign. Thus Molloy exhorts his prole readers ambitious to acquire an upper-middle-class look to equip themselves with beige raincoats as soon as possible. The implication of beige, one supposes, is that it advertises one’s greater carelessness about the risk of stains: there’s a go-to-hell air about it that doesn’t attend the prudent black number. You will not be at all surprised now to hear that in I Love Lucy the raincoat worn by Ricky Ricardo is black.