{"id":1464,"date":"2013-04-09T13:18:11","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T20:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1464"},"modified":"2013-04-09T13:18:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T20:18:11","slug":"mens-style-books-the-suit-by-nicholas-antongiavanni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1464","title":{"rendered":"Men&#8217;s style books: The Suit by Nicholas Antongiavanni"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 5px;\" src=\"http:\/\/english.books.ch\/annot\/4B56696D677C7C33303431303931347C7C434F50.jpg?sq=1\" alt=\"image\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" align=\"right\" \/>\u201cThe end is nigh,\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ahaspel\/status\/236863633353740289\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">tweeted<\/span><\/a>\u00a0an aphorist I admire, \u201cfor all books must now bear the explanatory subtitle \u2014 the mark of the beast.\u201d\u00a0<em>The Suit<\/em>\u2019s title bears not just that mark, but one of interference before the colon as well. The author wanted to title his book\u00a0<em>The Dandy<\/em>;\u00a0his publisher, afraid that wouldn\u2019t sell, proposed<em>The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men\u2019s Style<\/em>, which suggests a manual on\u00a0how to manipulate the corporate world through dress. This puts Machiavelli in a misleading light, but the term\u00a0<em>Machiavellian<\/em>\u00a0sees such misuse that the assumption comes naturally. However, in Nicholas Antongiavanni we have a serious appreciator of Machiavelli as well as menswear. He meant to have his original title reference\u00a0<em>The Prince<\/em>, and just as Machiavelli advises a prince, Antongiavanni advises a dandy, \u201cthe enemy of the splendiferous and the effeminate\u201d who favors \u201csimple clothes, pristine in cut, immaculate in fit [ \u2026 ] never ostentatious, always manly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Alas, we live in a time of few princes, and nearly as few dandies. Prince Charles counts as both, and Antongiavanni makes a case study out of him more than once. He also draws lessons from the dress of American newscasters and presidents. \u201cBrokaw is the most elegant,\u201d he observes of the former group. \u201cRather\u2019s clothes fit well, but he is so slavish in aping his hero Edward R. Murrow \u2014 even patronizing the same Savile Row tailor \u2014 that he cannot be said to have any style of his own.\u201d President Johnson, envious of Kennedy, \u201csought out a London tailor whom he told to make him \u2018look like a British diplomat.\u2019\u201d Of Carter, Antongiavanni writes only that \u201cit is one thing to wear Hawaiian shirts in Key West or jeans and cowboy boots when splitting wood, and another to address the people from the Oval Office in a sweater.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/putthison.com\/post\/47028171702\/colin-marshall-on-menswear-books-the-suit-by-nicholas\">at Put This On<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe end is nigh,\u201d\u00a0tweeted\u00a0an aphorist I admire, \u201cfor all books must now bear the explanatory subtitle \u2014 the mark of the beast.\u201d\u00a0The Suit\u2019s title bears not just that mark, but one of interference before the colon as well. The author wanted to title his book\u00a0The Dandy;\u00a0his publisher, afraid that wouldn\u2019t sell, proposedThe Suit: A Machiavellian [&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-1464","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\/1464","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=1464"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1467,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions\/1467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}