{"id":1641,"date":"2013-06-18T09:22:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T16:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1641"},"modified":"2013-06-18T09:22:58","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T16:22:58","slug":"mens-style-books-tom-julian-the-nordstrom-guide-to-mens-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1641","title":{"rendered":"Men’s style books: Tom Julian, The Nordstrom Guide to Men’s Style"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"I haven\u2019t set foot in a Nordstrom in years. Come to think of it, maybe I\u2019ve never entered one at all. They seem expensive, and I \u2014 perhaps you, too \u2014 tend only to break out that kind of money at the most obscurely specialized of specialty shops: places with new-old-stock tie clips from sixties Japan, pocket squares made of battleship blueprints, aftershave left over from the days of Empire, that sort of thing. Certainly not old-school department stores that make me suspect my purchases will underwrite walls full of dark wood. But that caricatures unfairly a business like Nordstrom, which has provided stylistic succor to generations and generations of men in need of a wardrobe, and which I can\u2019t imagine afflicted by the national plague \u2014 downfall of so many other men\u2019s shops \u2014 of full-time suit salesmen who dress carelessly themselves. Though our age has seen the decline of the department store as a concept, Nordstrom appears to have retained not just its reliability, but a certain respectability as well. That merits a few points right there.<\/p>\n

But a Nordstrom-authorized men\u2019s style guide? Such a book seems somehow at odds with the store\u2019s core mission, which I understand as not just clothes sales but a kind of expertise rental: the high prices buy you peace of mind through a gentle, even genteel, Jeeves-like guidance away from embarrassing choices and toward flattering ones, as well as the dark-wooded environment in which it all happens. Shouldn\u2019t the study of men\u2019s style books, at least as we practice it here at\u00a0Put This On, obviate the need for just that kind of pricey consigliere service? But even as he passes along his lessons in this sort of expertise in the\u00a0Nordstrom Guide to Men\u2019s Style<\/em>, \u201cconsumer trend expert\u201d Tom Julian implements the countermeasure of periodically inserting the word \u201cNordstrom\u201d into his sentences: \u201cYou have more than thirty sizes to select from at Nordstrom stores.\u201d \u201cIf all this measuring sounds like a nightmare, don\u2019t worry \u2014 every Nordstrom salesperson can do it for you.\u201d \u201cAll four of these looks express strong, masculine style in their own way \u2014 which is quintessentially Nordstrom.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing at Put This On<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven\u2019t set foot in a Nordstrom in years. Come to think of it, maybe I\u2019ve never entered one at all. They seem expensive, and I \u2014 perhaps you, too \u2014 tend only to break out that kind of money at the most obscurely specialized of specialty shops: places with new-old-stock tie clips from sixties […]<\/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-1641","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\/1641","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=1641"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1643,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions\/1643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}