Is "Dressing The Man" Still Worth Reading?

Back in the pandemic, when TV news guests all of a sudden had to call in from home, a stunning amount of them chose to not-so-subtly place Robert Caro’s 1,300 page epic The Power Broker within their webcam’s borders. The phenomenon was covered by the New York Times, and even yielded a Twitter account dedicated to spotting Caro’s works in people’s Zoom backgrounds.

If that biography is how politicos like to telegraph that they’ve done the reading, menswear’s historic equivalent is Dressing the Man, Alan Flusser’s 320-page, 2002 guide to “dressing well without becoming a fashion victim.”

Once you’ve seen the cover, you’ll spot it everywhere: In the fitting rooms of bespoke tailors, in the background of men’s style channels on YouTube, in the unfortunate “whiskey and leather chair” corners of some newer menswear stores.

Dressing the Man’s ubiquity—and some of the unnecessary hills its author dies on—has also made it something of a joke. During our time together, the designer Luke Derrick described the book to me as a “Time machine … It relentlessly obsesses over men from the 1920s, and tries to basically say that that decade was the best it ever got, with all these pictures of Fred Astaire.”

Derrick is right. It does say that about the 1920s, and it is full of Astaire shots. But at the same time, Flusser spent decades working as a designer, stylist, and tailor, most famously outfitting Michael Douglas for his star turn as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Surely, the book might still contain some useful gems, even if his advice on how to wear a waistcoat is currently surplus to requirements?

This weekend, I finally read the thing, and took at least enough from it to say I’ve enjoyed getting dressed this week more than I did last. Below, part one—my favourite parts of pages 1 to 100.