Book Review: “The Suit”
If, like me, you’re new to this whole “men’s style” thing, but have made the commitment to dress better and learn about how to do it well, you’re in luck. There is an abundance of information available to you, both printed, and on the Internet, that will help educate you. Blogs by the likes the The Silentist and Will contain oodles of information for you to read through. In addition to forums like Style Forum and Ask Andy, many guys on Tumblr will generously respond to your questions (e.g., again, The Silentist).
There are also many excellent books out there written by true experts: “Dressing the Man” (Flusser), “Gentleman” (Roetzel), “The Elegant Man” (Villarosa & Angeli), and many others by slightly less august authors.
Should you choose to take the time to read through this trove of information, and I recommend that you do, you will eventually find that there is what amounts to a canon of “rules” or “advice” for elegant dressing (suits, odd jackets, formal wear, etc.). This guidance is informed by history and focused on a more traditional approach to dress (though with no shortage of inducements to “flare” or “dandyism”). Adherence to this canon will ensure that, while you may not be the “hippest” of men, you will be stylishly turned out and will do yourself no overt harm.
What if you don’t have the time or inclination to dig through all this information and divine this canon for yourself (and again, I advise you to try and find some time for discovery)? In that case, if I had to recommend one source for you to use, it would be “The Suit” by Nicholas Antongiavanni.
In this small (5.5” x 7”, 240 pages including index and reference) and inexpensive (about $14 US) book, the author succinctly and concretely summarizes what I’d consider an undergraduate education in dressing well. He writes in the style of Machiavelli as a literary device—some may find this annoying but I enjoyed it—but the writing is, in general very clear and precise (the author is, buy now, well known to be a former speechwriter for US presidents). In fourteen chapters he covers much of what you need to know:
- Body types, garments that flatter specific types, fit.
- Suit silhouettes and their histories, garment quality, fabrics.
- Shoes, quality, styles, construction, English vs. Italian, socks.
- Shirts, fabrics, collar styles vs. neck types, fit, construction.
- Formality vs. dandification.
- Odd jackets and trousers.
- Neckwear, silk, construction, knots, pins, bars.
- Suspenders, pocket squares, cuff links, jewelry, vests.
- Formal wear.
- American tastes and the decline of the dandy.
- A continuous exhortation to dress well and swim against the current.
To finish up, I’ll say that I like the author’s style—he is, simply put, an outstanding writer. I’ll leave you with a few quotes from the book. There are many more, lots of them I found quite funny while being educational.
Here he talks about men that “over coordinate”:
Above all, he eschews “outfits.” For outfits are for women. The well-dressed man never buys any garment that can be worn with only with one or few of his other garments, and holds in contempt pre-assembled combinations. Everything you buy should be wearable with most everything you already own. In addition to saving you money, this will make you more stylish, for part of style is knowing how to create different and interesting ensembles from a multitude of garments.
The following is a discussion of shirt colors:
Pink is underutilized by most men, who fear its effeminate connotations, but dandies know it is a smart accompaniment to a wide range of suitings—particularly gray, which it elevates from banker drab to the summit of style—and a marvelous background for a wide variety of ties, especially summer’s bold and colorful neckwear. Other useful colors yellow, the preppy hue par excellence, which works best in oxford button downs and with browns and tweeds; faint gray, a favorite among great dressers of the 1930s; cream, a more lively alternative to white; rare and dandified lavender; and the still-rarer sage green.
In this quote the author discusses the appropriateness of various suit colors:
Grey, blue, and brown are the great triumvirate of colors for men’s suitings—none but these should be worn. The only exceptions are olive and off-white, and these only in warm weather. The darker the color, the more formal the suit. Lighter shades go well with warmer weather, while darker shades are appropriate all year. Brown in any shade, from tan to chocolate to charcoal, is best worn during the day, as are lighter shades of blue and gray.
Likewise, for suit fabric patters:
As for patterns, solids are the most formal, followed by stripes, nailhead, and birdseye (tiny frequent dots on a darker background; nailhead is smaller and squarer), pic-and-pic (tiny, staggered diagonal lines, like miniature staircases), herringbone, windowpane, houndstooth, and glen plaid.
Downsides to the book? As I said, the literary device of writing in a Machiavellian voice may rub some readers the the wrong way. In the author’s own words “I borrow certain literary devices from Machiavelli. One of those is a penchant for the occasional exaggeration.” Also, there are no educational illustrations or photographs (though the author’s writing is so descriptive that I didn’t miss them). As an alternative, for those that might prefer a similarly sized and priced ($10 US) book, may I recommend “Style and the Man” by Flusser (a condensation of information from his other, more lavishly illustrated, books).
Should you prefer listening to reading, there is an interview with the author in Humanities magazine and another interview, sourced from Pajamas Media.com, and published on YouTube.
Finally, the pick-and-pick suit under the book (in the photograph) will be the subject of a post of its own at some point (when I eventually fit into it).
