{"id":598,"date":"2012-05-17T09:30:31","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T16:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=598"},"modified":"2012-05-17T09:33:17","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T16:33:17","slug":"peter-macneil-and-vicki-karaminas-the-mens-fashion-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=598","title":{"rendered":"Peter MacNeil and Vicki Karaminas: The Men&#8217;s Fashion Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-599\" style=\"margin: 5px;\" title=\"mensfashionreader\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/2012\/05\/mensfashionreader1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/2012\/05\/mensfashionreader1.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/2012\/05\/mensfashionreader1-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/>For all its relevance to their interests, I wonder how many menswear enthusiasts would, or could, sit down and read this book. Despite coming in the same thickness and glossiness as many standard menswear books do, <em>The Men\u2019s Fashion Reader<\/em> has no dressing advice to offer, nor does it concentrate exclusively on the history, development, or mechanics of men\u2019s clothing. It does contain a great deal of <em>analysis<\/em>, delivered in the form of 35 separate articles on everything from dandyism to the Japanese adoption of the western suit to the rise and fall of the Men\u2019s Dress Reform Party. And indeed, any man who takes an active interest in what he wears will find dozens upon dozens of fascinating pages \u2014 embedded, alas, within hundreds of academic ones.<\/p>\n<p>Here I use the word \u201cacademic\u201d mostly by its neutral definition, <em>\u201c<\/em>of or pertaining to a college, academy, school, or other educational institution, especially one for higher education,\u201d but not without an eye toward the more pejorative ones. \u201cOf purely theoretical or speculative interest,\u201d \u201cexcessively concerned with intellectual matters and lacking experience of practical affairs\u201d \u2014 these charges often stick. McNeil and Karaminas make no bones about their book as a product of the academy, for the academy, and a quick glance across online collage syllabi reveals that professors do indeed assign it. Yet its relatively lush printing, complete with two sections of color plates showing off eighteenth-century finery, midcentury California leisurewear, and the unconventional fashion choices of Japanese youth surely makes it one of those burdensomely expensive, beer money-eating pieces of required reading. A peculiar hybrid, this book: its form keeps it from quite belonging on the student\u2019s bookshelf, and its content keeps it from quite belonging on the well-dressed man\u2019s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/putthison.com\/post\/23168482920\/menswear-books-peter-mcneil-and-vicki-karaminas-the\">at Put This On<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For all its relevance to their interests, I wonder how many menswear enthusiasts would, or could, sit down and read this book. Despite coming in the same thickness and glossiness as many standard menswear books do, The Men\u2019s Fashion Reader has no dressing advice to offer, nor does it concentrate exclusively on the history, development, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clothes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","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=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":601,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions\/601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}