Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion

by Alan Flusser

Overview

Dressing the Man is the definitive guide to what men need to know in order to dress well and look stylish without becoming fashion victims.

Alan Flusser's name is synonymous with taste and style. With his new book, he combines his encyclopedic knowledge of men's clothes with his signature wit and elegance to address the fundamental paradox of modern men's fashion: Why, after men today have spent more money on clothes than in any other period of history, are there fewer well-dressed men than at any time ever before?

According to Flusser, dressing well is not all that difficult, the real challenge lies in being able to acquire the right personalized instruction. Dressing well pivots on two pillars — proportion and color. Flusser believes that "Permanent Fashionability," both his promise and goal for the reader, starts by being accountable to a personal set of physical trademarks and not to any kind of random, seasonally served-up collection of fashion flashes.

Unlike fashion, which is obliged to change each season, the face's shape, the neck's height, the shoulder's width, the arm's length, the torso's structure, and the foot's size remain fairly constant over time. Once a man learns how to adapt the fundamentals of permanent fashion to his physique and complexion, he's halfway home.

Taking the reader through each major clothing classification step-by-step, this user-friendly guide helps you apply your own specifics to a series of dressing options, from business casual and formalwear to pattern-on-pattern coordination, or how to choose the most flattering clothing silhouette for your body type and shirt collar for your face.

A man's physical traits represent his individual road map, and the quickest route toward forging an enduring style of dress is through exposure to the legendary practitioners of this rare masculine art. Flusser has assembled the largest andmost diverse collection of stylishly mantled men ever found in one book. Many never-before-seen vintage photographs from the era of Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, and Fred Astaire are employed to help illustrate the range and diversity of authentic men's fashion. Dressing the Man's sheer magnitude of options will enable the reader to expand both the grammar and verbiage of his permanent-fashion vocabulary.

For those men hoping to find sartorial fulfillment somewhere down the road, tethering their journey to the mind-set of permanent fashion will deliver them earlier rather than later in life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060191443
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/01/2002
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	142,427
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Alan Flusser is the author of a number of books about men's style, including Dressing the Man. He is the president of Alan Flusser Designs, a company he founded in 1979. He attracted national attention in 1987 for Michael Douglas's wardrobe in Wall Street, as well as later acclaim for his work on the HBO movie Barbarians at the Gate, the Al Pacino movie Scent of a Woman, and American Psycho starring Christian Bale. In 1988, he was placed as a permanent member on the International Best-Dressed List.

Table of Contents

1	Permanent Fashion	2
2	The Power of Color	16
3	Proportion: The Foundation of Style	34
4	The Prerogatives of Pattern	62
5	The Suit	78
6	Odd Jackets, Trousers, and Waistcoats	100
7	The Dress Shirt	120
8	Neckwear	144
9	Hosiery Harmonies	170
10	Foot Decorum	186
11	Accessories: The Major Importance of Minor Things	210
12	Formalwear: Black-and-White Etiquette	232
13	Business Casual	254
	Glossary	277
	Bibliography	306
	Acknowledgments	307

What People are Saying About This

Tom Wolfe

“A Hoyle’s, a Fowler’s, a Webster’s, a Baedeker’s, a Machiavelli’s, a von Clausewitz’s guide to men’s dress.”

Art Cooper

“If it’s male elegance and sophistication you aspire to, DRESSING THE MAN will suit you perfectly.”

Editorial Reviews

A Hoyle’s, a Fowler’s, a Webster’s, a Baedeker’s, a Machiavelli’s, a von Clausewitz’s guide to men’s dress.” — Tom Wolfe

“If it’s male elegance and sophistication you aspire to, DRESSING THE MAN will suit you perfectly.” — Art Cooper, Editor in Chief, GQ

From the Publisher

If it’s male elegance and sophistication you aspire to, DRESSING THE MAN will suit you perfectly.

Art Cooper

A Hoyle’s, a Fowler’s, a Webster’s, a Baedeker’s, a Machiavelli’s, a von Clausewitz’s guide to men’s dress.

Tom Wolfe

Author and haberdasher Alan Flusser's Dressing the Man is an authoritative guide to the modern man's wardrobe, a surprisingly newsworthy subject thanks to the recent rise and fall of Silicon Valley's influence, and the cor-responding shifts at many companies from business wear to "business casual" and back again. Flusser leads off with the fundamentals, color and proportion, and builds all other associations from there. "Once you learn which colors enhance your complexion and why specific proportions flatter your physique," he writes, "you are halfway home." But Flusser is just warming up: The encyclopedic book continues with chapter-by-chapter discussions of everything a man might put on his body. With each description of socks, shoes, dress shirts and pocket squares, Flusser returns to his main point: that a man's clothes should harmonize with the tones of his skin and hair and with his physique. Style, like anything else a man wants to improve--his golf game, his public speaking, or his appreciation of fine wines--is a talent that can be learned.
—Richard Nalley

Forbes

During the past 25 years, men have spent more money on clothing for themselves than in any other period of modern history, says Alan Flusser (Style and the Man). The time has "never been more propitious for the emergence of a standing army of well-heeled swells," he believes, and in Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion, he takes readers on a tour of men's clothing that he attests will never go out of style. Flusser carefully explains how to mix patterns, what to look for when trying on clothes in the fitting room, what kind of jacket to wear with a straight-point collar, the history of the monk-strap shoe, the correct position for a bow tie and what "business casual" really means. Heavily illustrated with photographs of dapper dans from Humphrey Bogart to the Duke of Windsor and drawings depicting neckwear, suit jackets, coat sleeves and trouser creases, this is a superb reference for any man.

Publishers Weekly