Men's Style by Russell Smith

As fascinating and splendid a book as Bernhard Roetzel's Gentleman is (review here), it was in many ways a better history of men's fashion than a practical guide. Nothing wrong with that, but someone starting at square one like me needs a bit more basic, a compendium of the elementary rights and wrongs in menswear. There are a number of competitive entries in this niche, and I can recommend both The Handbook of Style from the editors of Esquire and the Men's Style Manual from the editor of Details.

Another entry in the growing field comes from Canadian journalist Russell Smith, who wrote a fashion column for The Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto. With his 2005 publication of Men's Style: The Thinking Man's Guide to Dress, Smith compiled his years of fashion knowledge and observation in a slim hardcover volume, opening with an essay on why men's fashion matters:

Outside those dark twenty-odd years in the middle of the last century, sophistication was always masculine. Even in the 1950s, it was considered manly to be well-groomed. Consider Cary Grant, the romantic hero of 1950s Hollywood. He was clean-shaven and wore elegant suits; he knew about what wine to drink with fish and how to mix a martini. Nor is there anything new about pampering: the ritual of the hot shave in a barbershop was a deeply masculine convention right into the 19880s.

More importantly, the privileging of the natural over the artificial is philosophically unjustified. It leads to repressive thinking. For there is nothing inherently morally impure about the artificial. Art and artifice come from the same root - ars, artis; skill, practice. Skill is a particularly human value. Art is a uniquely human activity. All art is artificial.

Smith's coverage is comprehensive, with chapters devoted to shoes, suits, jackets, shirts, ties, hardware, formal wear, casual, underwear, outerwear, scent, and hair. This is advice oriented to the practical. The chapter on shoes covers such questions as "Which with What," "Colours," "Shoes with Formal Wear," and "How Many Do I Need?"

Nowhere is your taste and social background so neatly summarized as in your choice of shoe. It is the single most important part of your image, the root from which your projected self grows. Large numbers of single women judge prospective male partners rapidly and solely by looking at their feet.

Shoes are the only item of clothing on which you really must spend a great deal of money. It is not really important for the rest of your ensemble. An inexpensive but modishly cut suit can fool TV cameras and fashion journalists alike; an H&M shirt is perfectly hip during its six-month lifespan; a twenty-dollar tie from Wal-Mart is still pure silk. But cheap shoes always look bad. Cheap shoes will also wear out. Good shoes can be resoled almost infinitely and will obviate shoe-buying for ten years. From a purely financial standpoint, you cannot afford cheap shoes.

And if nothing else, I can credit Smith with guiding me to my new scent:

For those who want the dad association without the flimsiness, a more sophisticated manly-spicy-leathery scent - an upscale Old Spice - Hermes's Rocabar, a deep and heavy aroma that connotes men's clubs and cigars. This too has a remarkable effect on women, who - in my informal survey - unfailingly call it "manly."

A few things keep this book merely in the realm of the good rather than the great. First of all, unlike virtually all other men's fashion guides, this one is wholly lacking in photographs, color or otherwise. There are nice sketches here and there to illustrate particular passages, but with a topic as visually oriented as fashion, the lack of photographs is a significant impediment.

More problematic is that much of what Smith offers, for better or worse, is just his opinion. That is certainly his right, he is clearly an accomplished fellow with a great deal of experience in fashion... but there are many passages that struck me as rather too single-minded. The preface on why fashion matters is almost absurdly defensive, and there is some advice that I simply can't classify as even arguably correct (e.g. his one "flamboyant" recommendation is a pair of traditional Dutch clogs, which he advises must be purchased in Europe). Still, there is much here that is simply beneath the likes of Roetzel and Flusser, and thus worthwhile for those of starting from scratch.