{"id":1319,"date":"2013-02-05T02:04:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-05T10:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2013-02-05T02:04:41","modified_gmt":"2013-02-05T10:04:41","slug":"menswear-books-off-the-cuff-by-carson-kressley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1319","title":{"rendered":"Menswear books: Off the Cuff by Carson Kressley"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"margin: 5px;\" title=\"Off the Cuff\" src=\"http:\/\/images.betterworldbooks.com\/052\/Off-the-Cuff-Kressley-Carson-9780525948360.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"328\" height=\"400\" \/>About\u00a0<em>Queer Eye for the Straight Guy<\/em>, Bravo\u2019s hit reality program that ran from 2003 to 2007, you may recall exactly one thing: that despite their presentation as paragons of taste, none of the \u201cFab Five\u201d dressed with much of it. Or, more charitably, they seldom displayed what a\u00a0<em>Put This On\u00a0<\/em>reader might value. \u201cThe kind of dress,\u201d as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/asuitablewardrobe.dynend.com\/2009\/12\/shibumi.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Will Boehlke of A Suitable Wardrobe<\/span><\/a>\u00a0once put it, \u201cthat the eye passes over, only to return in appreciation.\u201d But to object is to misunderstand the show\u2019s central joke \u2014 its practical joke, really \u2014 of dropping a squadron of homosexual style consultants, playing up all applicable stereotypes at every chance, on schlub after heterosexual schlub. Though you wouldn\u2019t necessarily covet his wardrobe, I always appreciated the sartorial inconspicuousness of Ted Allen, the team\u2019s food-and-wine man, whose patient, mild manner offered these shaken straights a port in the storm of insistent fabulousness. But the laws of casting dictate that every such sober yin must balance a raging yang. Enter Carson Kressley, clothing specialist, \u201cfashion savant,\u201d and author of\u00a0<em>Off the Cuff: The Essential Style Guide for Men and the Women Who Love Them<\/em>\u00a0(also known as<em>Off the Cuff: The Guy\u2019s Guide to Looking Good<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>Should future cultural historians harshly re-evaluate\u00a0<em>Queer Eye\u00a0<\/em>as the minstrel show of our day, they\u2019ll hold up Kressley\u2019s performance as Exhibit A. Ablaze with bright colors and camera-distracting accessories, the man could, seemingly on cue, turn on a firehose of groanworthy sexual innuendo and witheringly sarcastic critique. If you never watched the show, you\u2019ll find him insufferable already; if you did, you\u2019ll understand that he nevertheless emerged as the most appealing character of many an episode. He somehow inspired the confidence, beneath all the theatrics, that he really did know his stuff. You wanted him in your corner. Cut to your core though his choice words about your shirts may, you knew he would sooner die than fail to find you better ones. Fans still argue, in comments below the broadcasts that have made it to YouTube, about whether the Fab Five truly left any given straight better off in the time-consuming food, complicated decor, or nebulous cultural departments, but at least Kressley always seemed to leave them more respectably clothed than he found them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/putthison.com\/post\/42283364859\/colin-marshall-on-menswear-books-off-the-cuff-by\">at Put This On<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About\u00a0Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Bravo\u2019s hit reality program that ran from 2003 to 2007, you may recall exactly one thing: that despite their presentation as paragons of taste, none of the \u201cFab Five\u201d dressed with much of it. Or, more charitably, they seldom displayed what a\u00a0Put This On\u00a0reader might value. \u201cThe kind of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-clothes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1322,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/1322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}