"The Emperor's New Clothes" is a short story by
Hans Christian Andersen. The story concerns an emperor who buys a new suit of clothes made, the weavers proclaim, from a special material that is invisible to the foolish and the unworthy. Everyone who sees the clothes being made praises the colour and the design; in fact, there is no such material, and everyone is praising empty air, but each man from the emperor down is afraid of what will be thought of him if he admits that he can't see a thing. When the new clothes are completed (and what fine, light material, that feels almost as if there is nothing there), the emperor parades around his capital to show off his new clothes; all the onlookers praise the non-existent clothes, until at last a small boy says "But the Emperor has nothing on!" and everybody admits that the child is right.