From choosing the
right pair of eyeglasses to properly coordinating a shirt, tie, and
pocket square, getting dressed is an art to be mastered. Yet, how
many of us just throw on, well, whatever each morning? How many
understand the subtleties of selecting the right pair of socks or the
most compatible patterns of our various garments—much less the
history, imperatives, and importance of our choices?
In True Style,
acclaimed fashion expert G. Bruce Boyer provides a crisp,
indispensable primer for this daily ritual, cataloguing the essential
elements of the male wardrobe and showing how best to employ them. In
witty, stylish prose, Boyer breezes through classic items and
traditions in menswear, detailing the evolution and best uses of
fabrics like denim and linen, accoutrements like neckties and
eyeglasses, and principles for combining patterns, colors, and
textures. He enlightens readers about acceptable circumstances for
donning a turtleneck, declaims the evils of wearing dress shoes
without socks, and trumpets the virtues of sprezzatura, the artistry
of concealing effort beneath a cloak of nonchalance.
With a gentle yet
firm approach to the rules of dressing and an incredible working
knowledge of the different items, styles, and principles of menswear,
Boyer provides essential wardrobe guidance for the discriminating
gentleman, explaining what true style looks like—and why.
The
Elements of Style
The
problem with dandyism is that one can easily end up looking like an
overdressed Easter egg.
By HENRIK BERING
Oct. 2, 2015 4:24
p.m. ET
In my wardrobe, a
few of my grandfather’s belongings from the late 1920s still
survive: his ankle-length touring greatcoat made of thick herringbone
tweed lined with fur, his officer’s dress cape with its golden
service buckle, his pith helmet, and his white tie and tails,
exquisitely tailored and still perfectly usable. Sadly lost in the
intervening years was his sword stick, from a Paris outfit
specializing in such exotic accessories, as well as his leather
suitcases, with their destination labels: Rome, Menton, St. Moritz,
Cairo. But the black-and-white photos of him in these locations
suggest an infinitely more stylish age.
Where fashion was
once dictated from the top down, it now rises from the street up. But
as G. Bruce Boyer shows in “True Style,” islands of elegance
still survive. As the author warns, the book is not a manual that
will tell the reader how to figure out the shirtfront for his tux or
tie a Windsor knot. Such elementary knowledge is taken as a given.
Rather, it is a cheerful attempt to define the underlying principles
for dressing well, while at the same time providing some of the
history behind what we wear.
Mr. Boyer, a former
editor at Town & Country, goes for timeless elegance, a
combination of “ease and charm and tradition.” Not for him the
arbitrary dictates of the fashionistas, as when some designer at Yves
Saint Laurent decrees that suits should be so tight-fitting and the
jackets so short that they make an adult man look like Pee-wee
Herman. Or when a shoe firm suddenly decides that men’s shoes
should be so long and pointy that they start to curl upward like
something worn by a tax collector in the Ottoman Empire.
Rather, Mr. Boyer’s
hero is the renaissance author Baldasar Castiglione, who in the “Book
of the Courtier” (1528) introduced the concept of sprezzatura,
advising his reader “to steer away from affectation at all costs,
as if it were a dangerous reef, and to preach in all things a certain
nonchalance [sprezzatura] which conceals all artistry and makes
whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.”
But the word
sprezzatura conveys more than mere thoughtless spontaneity, notes Mr.
Boyer: it is “a matter of reaching for perfection, while
cultivating the impression of never having given it thought.” By
holding back, it “implies greatness unseen, . . . a strength held
in reserve.” Thus the general mistake of the nouveaux riches is
that they tend to put it all on display. The impulse, Mr. Boyer
suggests, is akin to the owners of the French formal garden that was
designed, in the supposed words of the playwright George S. Kaufman,
“to show what God could have done if He’d have had money.” By
contrast, an English garden appears subtle and natural. So should the
way we dress.
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The classic example
of sprezzatura is afforded by the Regency buck Beau Brummell, who
discarded the standard court get-up of wig, jeweled waistcoat and
knee breeches in favor of a more natural and understated look. As the
arbiter of taste, notes Mr. Boyer, he would spend hours arranging his
neckcloth to achieve the right degree of “corrugated dishabille”
before venturing out. Once a visitor dropped by Brummell’s place
and saw cravats scattered everywhere. Asked what was going on,
Brummell’s valet responded, “Oh, Sir, those are our failures.”
According to
Brummell’s contemporaneous biographer, Capt. William Jesse, his
subject “shunned all external peculiarity and trusted alone that
ease and grace of manner which he possessed to a remarkable degree.
His chief aim was to avoid anything marked.”
The problem with the
dandy, a figure whom Max Beerbohm defined as “a painter whose
canvas was himself,” is that not everybody possesses Brummell’s
restraint: One can easily end up looking like an overdressed Easter
egg or a rare and extremely poisonous tropical flower. “Your
clothes should not in themselves be more memorable than you are,”
notes Mr. Boyer. “Individuality should be in evidence quietly.”
This is what marks the difference between the gentleman and the
poseur.
Mr. Boyer’s own
preference is for a slightly faded elegance, “the mildly rumpled”
rather than “the new and shiny.” As Nancy Mitford put it, “All
nice rooms are a bit shabby.” For daily wear, Mr. Boyer is fond of
the Ivy style, a “uniquely American look” developed on campuses
whose golden age ran from 1945 to 1965 and that re-emerged as the
neo-preppy style of the 1980s. Which is fine, provided the wearer
does not become too tweedily professorial or too youthfully preppy.
Clothes should never become a theatrical costume.
As regards neckwear
on formal occasions, Mr. Boyer regrets today’s penchant for
ditching the tie in the name of comfort and greater approachability.
From politicians holding high office and from certain professions,
such as bankers and lawyers, he reminds us, we do require a certain
gravitas. Besides, an open shirt front has the added disadvantage of
exposing turkey wattles when men get older.
For semiformal
occasions, where a tie is too much and polo shirt too little, Mr.
Boyer goes to bat for the ascot tie. As he notes, some men avoid it
for fear that they cannot live up to its aristocratic associations,
but if you watch movies from the late ’60s and early ’70s with
Michael Caine, Alain Delon, Dirk Bogarde, Marcello Mastroianni and
Edward Fox, you will see that it was quite popular. He is less keen
on turtleneck sweaters at cocktail parties, which, paired with
double-breasted blazers, tend to make wearers look like “extras
between takes of ‘Sink the Bismarck!’ ”
On the question of
socks, Mr. Boyer seems to break his own cardinal rule that a clothes
item should not be allowed to direct attention away from the wearer
by endorsing socks with playful motifs such as pink flamingos or
skulls and bones. I’m afraid this reviewer’s sense of humor does
not extend to socks. He accepts bare feet in loafers in hot
climates—and why not?—but rightly condemns as downright evil
sockless feet in wing tips or with suits.
My only reservation
about Mr. Boyer’s overall message is the degree of hard work that
seems to be involved in achieving an appearance of effortlessness and
the constant concern with the impression you make on your
surroundings. Over the years, dressing tastefully should become
second nature—intuitive. And if you are reasonably self-confident,
you should not worry overmuch about what others think.
In the book, a young
Noël Coward provides a splendid example of a quick recovery from a
faux pas: Arriving for his first meeting at the fancy literary
Tomorrow Club wearing evening dress, he found himself facing a
phalanx of members wearing day clothes. After a brief silence, Coward
exclaimed: “I don’t want anybody to feel embarrassed.” Now,
that’s self-confidence.
—Mr. Bering is a
journalist and critic.
AN INTERVIEW WITH G.
BRUCE BOYER
Posted 10/27/15
By Derek Guy
Alan Flusser’s
Dressing the Man is popularly considered to be the book to read if
you’re interested in classic men’s clothing. For the regular
forumite, however, a lot of the stuff in there might be old hat
(especially if you spend your time debating how to fold pocket
squares). Better, I think, are Bruce Boyer’s Elegance, Eminently
Suitable, and the recently published True Style. Bruce is arguably
the best menswear writer of our time. Mixing historical insight with
practical advice, he ties social history with changes in men’s
dress, and gives some useful guidelines on how to wear tailored
clothing in today’s casual age.
For our upcoming
StyleForum x A&H Magazine trunk show, Bruce Boyer will be joining
us to sign copies of his new book True Style (which will be available
for sale at the show). He sat down with us last week to share some of
his thoughts on men’s style.
I’ve always
admired your ability to gently suggest rules to your readers without
seeming overly rigid or dogmatic. Do you feel rules are necessary for
developing good taste, or are they two separate things?
Most rules about
dress turn out to be silly, because fashion, like sin, changes. With
more classic or traditional tailored clothes, changes are less
perceptible but is still influenced by fashion. So any rule becomes
an exercise in futility. I've tried to suggest that the best way to
fight the vagaries and vicissitudes of fashion is to develop your own
style.
I'm not sure that
taste is even a consideration, because taste is a concept related to
class, as I think Roland Barthes pointed out in The Fashion System.
Our tastes, as well as our biases, don't usually come rationally nor
individually. But some people develop their own style quickly and
then hold to it. Think about Woody Allen, a man who developed his
style early on and has dressed pretty much the same his whole life. I
would say his style is beyond taste, or that taste is not really the
point.
I'm repulsed by
anarchy, and believe it's always good to first learn what the rules
are, whether it's for manners, writing, dressing, or any other aspect
of civilized life. I think even the geniuses among us, those who
construct their own worlds, first learn from the past before breaking
away into the future. Lord Chesterfield said, "Dress is a
foolish thing; and yet it is a very foolish thing for a man not to be
well dressed." Style is what happens when a person bends fashion
to his personality.
Do you think it’s
necessary to answer those existential questions when deciding on how
to dress yourself? On the one hand, the most stylish men I know dress
in a way that accords with their personality. On the other hand,
fashion has this large element of fantasy, where it allows us to feel
like the person we wish to be. Do you think men should stick to one
style, or is it OK to dabble here and there as trends pass?
I think a person
must have some sense of himself as an individual to develop style.
Philosophically I believe we all come into the world tabula rasa, and
we're left to invent ourselves as best we can. To name an obvious
example, Cary Grant started off as Archibald Leach, a child from a
lower-middle class family in Bristol, England. Consciously modeling
himself on several successful, sophisticated celebrities, he
eventually became the suave actor we recognize as Cary Grant. Of
course he was smart enough to know his persona was consciously
constructed, as he sometimes replied to strangers who said, "I
wish I were Cary Grant", by saying, "Me too."
Many people simply
take on the roles provided for them (by the media, retailers,
designers, or whatever). But I find that usually men (and women too
for that matter) of style develop "signatures," whether
they be uniforms or little eccentricities that distinguish them. This
happens because the sort of person with whom we associate style has
studied himself sufficiently to understand what works for him and
what doesn't. Or perhaps it's better to say what his attitude can
carry.
What do you see as
the future of tailored clothing? Formality has been declining for
over a hundred years … and yet, there’s been this huge revival
among younger consumers who are eager to dress up again. Will classic
clothes remain for the foreseeable future, or will they eventually be
subsumed by designers – living on only as reinterpretations?
If you look at the
statistics, there doesn't seem to be much argument: the tailored
wardrobe as it existed since the 1870s has been in retreat since the
Great Depression of 1929. It is interesting that the suit is still
with us in relatively the same form as it was in 1870. Almost 150
years is a pretty long run for a garment, and it still has its
appeal. That it has some appeal with young men can easily be seen
from the history of J. Crew, to name only an obvious example. J. Crew
started off selling casual clothes, and now they stock dinner
jackets.
My own theory, if I
may call it that, is that tailored clothing now has its appeal
precisely because it isn't a uniform anymore. Fewer and fewer men
have to wear suits, so buying one becomes a very personal style
choice, as well as something of an investment. Young men wear
tailored clothing now because there's a "coolness" it that
sort of an outfit, it's different and hip. And mature men like
tailored clothes because that sort of outfit represents, symbolizes,
success. Clothing, despite what people think, is not primarily about
sexuality or protection. It's about status. I grew up in a blue
collar neighborhood, and clothing-as-status was decidedly important.
Any public occasion called for dressing up because dignity and
respect were paramount to people who didn't have much in the way of
material possessions.
It does feel like
tailored clothing has stuck around because of its connotations with
status. At the same time, so much nuance has been lost. A
three-roll-two, hook vent sport coat doesn’t mean the same thing in
2015 as it did in the 1960s. You can’t infer anything about the
wearer anymore. I’m reminded of an article in The Guardian, where
the author says youth subcultures have lost their distinct uniforms.
Everyone just dresses in this vaguely hip way now. Similarly, a lot
of tailored clothing is morphing into this Italian-American style and
we’re losing a lot of distinctions.
As a person who has
written a lot about the semiotics of dress, what do you think of this
shift?
There has been a
shift in the semiotics of dress simply because everything now is
international. In menswear this is Internationalism #2, because in
the 1930s the English tailors of Savile Row provided the first wave
of internationalism. I would agree with the journalist from The
Guardian that many youth subcultures seem to have lost their distinct
uniforms. This has always happened to a certain degree. Consumerism
co-opts everything and the modern history of the arts is drowned in
consumerism. Even social protest movements such as feminism, Black
Power (see John Oliver Killens’ wonderfully funny novel The
Cotillion: or, One Good Bull is Half the Herd), and homosexual rights
have been co-opted by consumerism. The Eastern Establishment Elite
style of dressing -- we called it "Ivy League" in the 50s
-- became "Preppy" when commercial designers got a hold of
it, and it changed from a lifestyle dress to a fashion trend. Even
tradition is for sale; Downtown Abbey is not so much history as it is
an industry.
Since the internet
has now made us all global consumers, it's easy to believe that
brands with strong regional roots will be co-opted too (think of
Burberry, which used to be as English as fish and chips; and of
course Brooks Brothers actually used to represent something
stylistically). In a sense, this is what seems to have happened in
places like Japan, where Western costumes mix together easily.
For a person trying
to define himself this should theoretically mean that there are more
choices, since a person sitting at home in Topeka, Kansas can shop
anywhere in the world online. But on the other hand, it's more and
more true that regardless of where you go, you find yourself in a
place that mirrors an American mall: the same stores, the same fast
food, the same fashions. Armani boutiques are ubiquitous. And what's
the difference between a Starbucks in Paris and one in San Diego?
Small, artisanal shops find it hard to survive, but I'm hoping that
somehow the internet will become more of a help to these venues that
cater to more individual tastes. It's very difficult because we're
now accustomed to believing that the way to be somebody is to be like
everybody else, to buy something that makes you like everybody else
who's bought the same thing. Consumption, not individualism, is
considered the moral good.
A friend of mine
recently remarked that he’s only seen photos of you in tweed,
flannel, and cavalry twills. What do you wear in the warmer months?
It's true that I'm
mad about tweed and flannel, and would wear them all year 'round if I
could stand the heat of a Mid-Atlantic summer. For warmer weather I
prefer pure cottons and linens for trousers and jackets. Seersucker,
poplin, and linen wrinkle badly, but I don't care and, in fact, think
they look better when broken in. I must have a dozen pair of cotton
khakis in various weights, mostly from Cordings because they still do
a narrow leg with a high rise. I have a couple of tropical worsted
suits, the most recent a DB by Leonard Logsdail. And I love linen
sports jackets; I'd have one in every color if I could afford it. I
think if clothes are well-made, you don't have to sacrifice comfort
to looking decent.
I recently saw a
photo of you on Jake Grantham's Instagram, where you were pictured in
jeans, a navy jacket, and a floppy hat (which looked great, by the
way). For our members who wear more casual attire, who made the items
in that photo?
Jake took that photo
of me after we had lunch one rainy summer day. I was wearing old
jeans, and a dark blue linen safari jacket from The Armoury that had
been made by Ascot Chang; it's become my favorite default summer
jacket and I want to get that jacket in a few other colors. The hat
is an old khaki cotton casual number from Lock Hatters. I like it
because I can crumble it up in a ball, and stuff it in my pocket or
bag when not wearing it.
Thanks for your
time, Bruce. I'll end with the two most popular questions on the
board: when is the next Brooks Brothers sale and do you have a TBS
code I can use?
I probably won't
make the next Brooks sale unless they have the French-back underwear
on sale; that's about the only thing I buy at the store any more.
What's a TBS code?
