Esquire The Handbook of Style: A Man's Guide to Looking Good

This is a decent style guide that I might recommend to someone who has no clue about how to dress well, or what constitutes a good wardrobe. It's a starting point, with some helpful information on shirts, suits, pants, shoes, coats, accessories, personal grooming, and tips on wardrobe maintenance, packing a suitcase, and so on. For someone with a moderate budget who needs to build a wardrobe from the ground up, the checklist type approach in the Esquire handbook could work well. The book is a convenient size, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring it with you on your next shopping trip.That said, it's not a very good resource for someone who already has a working knowledge of menswear and who wants more detailed information, and there are some other issues worth mentioning. There are no color photographs, which should be a priority when color is so important to many of the parts of a wardrobe. Illustrations and photos are used interchangeably, but a few of the illustrations would work better as photos.Some important things are glossed over or skipped entirely. In the shoe chapter, there is virtually no information on shoe construction. There are many different ways to make and identify a good shoe (and a bad one), but you wouldn't know it from this book. There is a two-sentence definition of goodyear welts, and that's about it. For garments, there is almost no information about fabrics, fabric weights, weaves or patterns. You'll know lots of cute little trivia about what kind of collars wall street bankers like to wear, but like the shoe chapter, you'll be left ignorant about what defines a well-made shirt. There are five pages dedicated to watches, but the book is very light on substantive information. It's great to know what watch Chow Yun Fat wore in The Corruptor, and that Al Gore's digital Timex projects a stately and professional image (!?), it really is. But all you learn from this book is that Omega watches are sweet, you can match watches with cufflinks, and mechanical watches are more expensive than quartz. Great. For a man investing money in a wardrobe, the watch is likely to be the most expensive thing he wears, and the most costly to maintain. There should have been at least five more pages on the subject.There are two things in this book that stand out as extremely goofy. Out of left field, Donald Trump is showered with praise in two different chapters for his impeccable style, power, and unparalleled business acumen. From page 173: "the tycoon has never lacked the courage of his convictions. His hairstyle is no exception. It's an assertion of control and an expression of his approach to business...nothing is left to chance." I hope the huge check Esquire got for this shameless fellatio-in-print didn't bounce. But I'm probably being unfair. I'm sure Esquire must be referring to a different Donald Trump. The Donald Trump I know of went bankrupt over and over and over again, has a hairpiece that's been an object of ridicule all around the world for 25 years, and now makes a living by ranting about the president's birth certificate and putting his name on awful $15 "executive" dress shirts made in China that not even Ross and Burlington Coat Factory can sell.Almost as goofy as the ankle-grabbing Trump love is a diagram on one page telling men to never, ever wear a necktie or cufflinks with jeans.....and on the VERY NEXT PAGE Jay Z is exalted for wearing a necktie and cufflinks with some baggy jeans, or as they say, "faultlessly blending Savile Row swank with sly street funk." Grampa, is that you? Who on God's sweet green Earth says "sly street funk"? Speaking of grandparents, this book is surprisingly out of date. About 60% of the men featured in the photos have been dead for decades. It's nice to see some timeless styles, but come on now.This book is more style than substance (har har), and the authors get more caught up in brand names and cute little lists of "wardrobe essentials" (all of which can be found at your nearest Macy's ;D ) than informing readers well. It's not an accident that if you flip through any random issue of Esquire or GQ, you'll find ads for every single type of product mentioned in this book. Every single one. You might say the book is an advertisement for other advertisements. But considering the price, portability, and the breadth of information, it's not a bad introduction to style. Just be sure to use the book only as a starting point.And one more thing. The front cover label of my book was glued on upside down. Nice one, guys. Nice one.

There have been several complaints about the color scheme of this book. To be clear, this manual is NOT Black and White. It's an intelligently designed, carefully grayscale, with forest green and mint green as the two accent colors. Yes, the pictures are in grayscale. Yes, the text is a fairly dark grey. The headers and such are not--they are a forest green. Mint and forest green appear throughout the book most often for layout or diagram purposes.Note that I comment on the intelligently designed aspect of this. This book is not designed to tell a man exactly how to dress. It is not designed to be a bible of style and followed religiously. This book is a "road map"--as the authors refer to it--for a man to interpret then decide for himself which aspects to implement.Thus, the book is a reasonably compact guide with pictures in grey scale adequate for its intended purpose. It's much less visually distracting--which enables the reader to more carefully analyze the details they generally would ignore: for example, the the pattern guide and the shoe-lace guide would seem "busy" visually if color pictures were to be included--they'd detract from the comparison that is being focused upon. Of course, they could simply include color pictures, but then that renders the book stylistically inconstant--something a style guide would, of course, avoid. The purpose of the guide is to communicate a concept to the reader with minimal confusion. Color pictures would undermine that.This book operates on the perspective that it's audience is intelligent, capable of visualization or at least capable of using modern technology. (Anyone seeing this, or attempting to order this online is of course, in possession of one of those qualities. Brick-and-mortar bound purchasers may not be.) If you want a kindergarten-style hand-in-hand shopping guide, pass this guide on to your mother then have her shop for you. (To be clear, this is more or less what I'm doing for my baby brother--he recently turned 15. Judge for yourself at what age it is inappropriate for a female relative--not a significant other--to do the entirety of your shopping for you.)Just be flattered that the guide has high-expectations of its reader's basic mental abilities. If all else fails, either pass this to a trusted friend or family member, then have them guide you through it. Or, if you prefer to understand men's style, start with a simpler, more visual-focused guide with an introduction of the basics then proceed to this guide. On that note, Detail's eponymous style guide would be a good pick. It's a slightly more expensive and physically larger volume with good color photographs and a reduced amount of text (and a corresponding reduced amount of information). It will, however, more than adequately cover the basics, offer more hard-and-fast "rules" and require less intelligent thought on the part of the reader. The choice is yours.

If you like to dress up, then this book is for you. It is packed with valuable advice and is fully illustrated throughout. Chapters are intuitively chosen; the book starts by discussing the finer points of buying a suit. It then goes through shirts, pants, even personal care, and ends with a chapter on building a wardrobe. Each page is filled with tips, pictures of fashion icons, and notes for investing in your clothes. I personally found the Accessories chapter to be a fun read, especially since I am a fan of vintage watches and bow ties.Are you old enough to know what the Preppy Handbook is? If so, this is an updated and less-snobbish version of the classic. In fact, this is the new Preppy Handbook, occasionally with a similar tongue-in-cheek approach. There are several other books in the market, but none are as easy to read as this. The focus is on men's clothes in general, not just suits and formal wear as in Alan Flusser's Dressing the Man. And though brands and specialty stores are mentioned, the emphasis is on how to distinguish well-made clothes, not just where to buy them.Unlike other fashion books that will become outdated, this is one is not about trends, but really about style. You will pass this on to your sons in the future, so do them a favor and buy them one each. Give it the day they leave for college, or as an 18th birthday present.If you read GQ or Esquire for their buying guides, do yourself a favor and pick up this book. It would take years of subscribing to magazines to come up with all the info between the covers.Overall, an entertaining, informative, and essential guide for any man who cares about the way he looks.

good delivery and quality of book

Excelente livro, obrigatório para quem deseja se vestir de maneira comprometida com os parâmetros seculares da moda clássica masculina. A única crítica a fazer fica por conta das ilustrações em preto e branco. Uma obra dessa magnitude merecia impressão colorida.

この本を持っているか、持っていないかは結構、重要。ファッション関係者なら必読だと思う。

Essential reading if you're trying to build a wardrobe or understand the basics of style. More a reference book, most chapters short and right to the point.

This guide is very good, but there are a few glaring howlers. Stylish men-who don't need to read this book-will spot them.