Men and Style

Essays, Interviews and Considerations

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• Publisher: Abrams
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781613122372
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

New York Times BestsellerMen and Style reaches beyond standard "what to wear" advice: It is equal parts style guide and intriguing conversation about the masculine identity within the world of fashion. David Coggins explores the history of men's style and learns from some of the most notable tastemakers in the industry and beyond. Its essays and interviews discuss the lessons men learned from their fathers, the mistakes they made as young men, and how they emerged to become better men. Some of the most dapper men in the world discuss bad mustaches, misguided cologne choices, and unfortunate prom tuxedos. All the men here have arrived at a place in the world and have a keen understanding about how they fit in it. Men and Style celebrates singular men who've lived well and can tell us about how they earned their worldview. They're smart enough to absorb the wisdom that's hidden in the world, and even smarter to wear that wisdom lightly.

PART I
Becoming Men of Style: A Rake’s Progress

Foreword: The Exquisite Propriety of Men

Introduction: Higher Learning

Beginnings

The Power of Clothes

Youthful Exuberance: Onward and Upward

How Did You Dress as a Boy?

Certain Advantages

Rituals of Court

How Did Your Father Dress?

Fathers & Grandfathers

Considerations: Gregory Peck

The Dress Code: Rules of the Game

Ties and the Meaning of Things

Did Your Father Have Rules?

Do You Have Rules?

Did You Wear a Uniform?

The Case for Imperfection

There Goes the Neighborhood: The Unending Pursuit of Authenticity

In College

Considerations: Gay Talese

Men of Style

Some Inheritance

Foreword

The Exquisite Propriety of Men

This is not a book about fashion. It is a book about style, that holistic aestheticism that gives us reason for living. Fashion is what the social climbers are wearing; fashion is for followers. The dandy is an individualist, a man of style. He does things his own way, right or wrong—and if wrong, instructively so. If he has anything to do with fashion, he’s likely not to notice because it’s following directly behind him.

My friend David Coggins, the author of this delightful compendium of sartorial lore and vestmental testimony, is a dandy in the ancient and classical sense. He is not a fop or a peacock, a frak or a flamer. He doesn’t make a spectacle of himself. People don’t turn around to look at him as he passes them on the street. He is not an idler, a flaneur, or boulevardier—although he could be taken as such. He’s quite subtle, when he wants to be. He could even pass for a conservative until you look closely because, as we all know, the devil is in the details, and thus El Diablo is the patron saint of sartorial distinction. Hence the gleam in the eye.

Coggins is relatively discreet for a man of style, lurking in a back booth of the club, dressed very properly, or sitting at home rereading an obscure first edition, wearing the tie of a club he was blackballed from and sipping some obscure distillate. He is a still-curious connoisseur and a historian of oral lore yet to be written. He is, however, a self-deprecating fellow, sometimes to the point of annoyance, and his idea of making a statement is understatement, at which he excels.

Coggins is also a dandy in the philosophical sense, the Baudelairean sense. A true dandy is not that horrible thing called a fashionista. He doesn’t dress wondering what might lure the street-style strobe and the photo-remora of the red carpet, but more likely, he dresses according to what will go with a marvelous new pair of cashmere socks. The true dandy dresses to honor himself (only coincidentally to shame the flagrant) and to demonstrate the superiority of the timeless to the latest.

It is likely that the individual dandy’s style (and there are many exemplars here) has changed little since puberty. It’s quite possible that he inherited it from Dad, as one would a ginger beard or a Roman nose. Fashion is industry; style is culture. That’s why this book is important. It’s not about trends or marketing. It’s about ideas and themes, arts and rituals, the things that constitute culture.

The dandy takes great pains dressing to express himself; this fastidiousness may occasionally be noticed by the hoi polloi, but the dandy’s manner of dress is for himself, not for an audience, except those initiates he can count as peers. It is not his intention to draw stares on the street. His intention is to simply follow his knowledge and instinct by any means necessary to create a suitable habitat for his sensibility. The true dandy approaches life as art, doing everything as best he can.

The style of that most famous of dandies, George “Beau” Brummell—the first famous commoner, thus the first celebrity—was not flamboyant as is widely assumed today. He invented the modern suit, and changed the masculine palette from the wild gilt-trimmed peacock spectrum favored by an idle and grandiose aristocracy to the black, charcoal, navy, buff, and dove-gray of the man of affairs. He trimmed the entourage lounge wardrobe to a silhouette favoring the lean and athletic body of a chevalier, a man of action. Lord Byron said of Brummell that there was nothing remarkable in his style of dress except “a certain exquisite propriety.” He was simply creating a style that favored the man of affairs and achievement, not the hereditary landlord; a style that recognized that art, décor, and wit were the coming currency. Today’s dandy is also a reformer, the enemy of sweatpants and industrially distressed faux work-wear.

Brummell’s revolution coolly expressed disdain, as has Coggins and the latter-day dandies he has assembled as expert witnesses in this volume. These are “creatives.” They are not corporate functionaries or the couture clad conspicuous consumers of the 1%. These men are more likely to drive a 9-horsepower Citroën 2CV than a Lamborghini Huracán, more likely to be found in a dive bar than a velvet-roped “table service” joint with knucklehead bottle prices. They are the 1% only in their intelligence.

Coggins and his witnesses are for the prosecution of the vulgarity that surrounds us, that upstages us in mass communication, and dwarfs us in resources. And so we are still following the directions of Charles Baudelaire from The Painter of Modern Life:

Whichever label these men claim for themselves, one and all stem from the same original, all share the same characteristic of opposition and revolt; all are representatives of what is best in human pride, of that need, which is all too rare in the modern generation, to combat and destroy triviality.

Oh, you’ll find what looks like trivia here, but its trivia that tells a story and encapsulates an attitude.

This is one of those books that’s genuinely hard to put down because it’s so easy and entertaining . . . Oh I’ll just read one more chapter . . . but it’s also a book you can take on a trip or even keep in the loo because it’s neatly modular. You won’t lose your place or the plotline. It’s all about you, about us. It’s personal, but also clubby. At times reading this, I almost felt I was reading the yearbook of an imaginary university, with cliques ranging from Cynic to Sophist to Epicurean, and absolutely no requirements other than self-interest and revolt against the status faux. Of course I also know many of the contributors, and, oddly, I found myself almost liking some of those whom I had dismissed for one reason or another. (Almost.)

But the diversity of the expert witnesses here assembled is an excellent thing. It constitutes a demos, a community that welcomes considerable differences while sharing a common goal—in this instance, the practice of life as art. And I quite enjoy that it both heals wounds and wounds heels. It is not a manifesto—those are quite unsalable today—but it is delightful testimony from the current crop of true dandies and some of their better imitators.

I think you’ll laugh again and again . . . at least twice, perhaps much more. But when you stop, you may think and think again, and dress the better for it tomorrow morning.

And when you’re dressing, remember Baudelaire: “[T]he dandy’s beauty consists above all in an air of coldness which comes from an unshakeable determination not to be moved; you might call it a latent fire which hints at itself, and which could, but chooses not to burst into flame.”

And, of course, Thomas Jefferson: “Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

What follows is cool.

—Glenn O’Brien

Introduction

Higher Learning

As a young man you’re taught lessons, and if you’re lucky you’re taught them by someone wise. But to actually learn them you have to live through failure on your own. A life without certain embarrassments has not been fully embraced—that’s why they take your picture at prom. Those photos exist to remind you that you didn’t know everything always, especially if you rented a tuxedo. But it only takes one time for you to realize that you wear a sport coat to the 21 Club, bring cash to Peter Luger, and never order a pink cocktail. Ideally, you arrive at this knowledge with your dignity intact. Even if you don’t, you have a good story, and you pass your wisdom on to the next man at the bar.

In the most direct sense, this is a book about men’s style—what men wear and why. But it’s also about emerging from the other side of youth, and having read the books, listened to your father (and argued with him), spent the night at the worst motel in New Mexico, watched your team lose in the bottom of the ninth, bluffed your way through a poker game, drank too much Laphroaig, slept past your train stop in Tokyo—how you still managed to keep it together and become a better man.

Who is the man we celebrate here? He’s an artist, an editor, a designer, a writer, a musician—a person who puts something out in the world and makes us have a better sense of it. He’s an individual who’s himself everywhere he goes, whether navigating the wine list at Le Grand Véfour in Paris or drinking bad beer in Stanley, Idaho. He’s not afraid to make the first move or be the last man standing at closing time. He may have well-known tailors, or he may prefer jeans. He may know every World Series lineup, or he may disregard sport. He may stow away first growths, or he may abstain from the bottle. But he has arrived at a place in the world and has a keen understanding about how he fits in it.

Ultimately, I like men who teach me things: what fly works when you’re fishing the Madison River, where to find roadside BBQ in Vermont, what’s a good orange wine from Croatia, a tailor in Florence, a still life in the National Gallery, a short story by Cheever. These are good things to know; they’re why you still carry a notebook. They say if you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’re in the wrong room. Hopefully, this book puts you in good company in the right room—one that, in spirit, is both library and open bar.

Most of the men interviewed here are friends, a few are strangers I admire who kindly agreed to contribute, others are men I find intriguing. It’s highly unscientific—isn’t that the nature of friendship, admiration and intrigue? This is not about being all things to all people, it’s about learning from singular men who’ve lived well and have something to tell us about how they earned their worldview. They’re smart enough to absorb the wisdom that’s hidden in the world, and even smarter to wear that wisdom lightly.

Salut!

D.C.

Alain Delon in Purple Noon

Beginnings

How do you begin to write about the way we dress? Like many things, you don’t recognize a pattern when it begins, the contours just become clear in retrospect. My interest in clothes when I was a boy growing up in Minneapolis was not historical or wide-ranging, it was intense and specific and, unfortunately, involved a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• PART I Becoming Men of Style: A Rake’s Progress
• PART II Intricacies of Dress: From Head to Toe
• PART III Manners and Misbehavior: Fine Distinctions
• PART IV Gentlemanly Concerns: Received Wisdom and New Interpretations
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright Page