Dressing The Gentleman

This exclusive interview with noted author and style journalist Bernhard Roetzel by Nicola Linza of Manner of Man and Cristoffer Neljesjö of Welldressed was conducted in Germany April 2010.


Q: How often do you follow the different rules in classic style?

A: Today I've followed 23 rules 75 times while yesterday I broke eight rules seven times. I'm only joking. In think the rules of classic are important but I never follow rules if they don't make sense. Most rules make sense or have made sense at a certain time. I don't like the rule about leaving the last button of the waistcoat unbuttoned because 1. It doesn't look good and 2. I wouldn't leave a button of my fly unbuttoned either. It's good to update some rules or adapt them to one's personal circumstances. I don't think that the world stops turning if you wear brown shoes after six in Germany.


Q: What is the biggest mistake you see men making today as regards clothing and/or grooming?

A: It has always been seen as a mistake if a 40-year-old man tries to dress like a twenty something. I notice today that many men of 40 dress like 8 or 12 year olds. When I bring my seven-year-old daughter to school, I'm the only man who doesn't wear sneakers, baseball cap and sweat shirt. I never wear suit and tie at that time of the day but even in a v-neck, corduroy, brogues and a raincoat I look like an alien. I think it is not good for children if their parents and all other grown ups dress like themselves. The worst mistake in grooming is to shave one's eyebrows in the shape of a fine line.


Q: What do you think men should think about when buying a suit?

A: The occasion that they need the suit for. The amount of time that they will spend in it. The way they want to be perceived by others in that suit.


Q: If you could go back to any era, which would it be? Moreover, why would you prefer that particular era?

A: I wouldn't prefer any other era. I am very happy to live today although some people would say that I don't live today but rather in the past. I don't believe in romantic ideas about the 18th century or the 19th century or the 1920s being so much more elegant than today etc. I think it's a waste of time to wish yourself to another time.


Q: What is are your primary concerns when approaching the concept for a new book for men?

A: The more I learn about style and fashion and the more I learn about life and what really counts in this world the more difficult I find it write about style and fashion in a way that respects the reader and my own views. Apart from that, I always try to give a light tone to the subject. This is especially difficult as we Germans are usually rather heavy on every subject.


Q: How would you describe your style?

A: Conservative in the true sense of the word. I like to stick to things that I like without being one-dimensional (hopefully). Others would probably call me old fashioned or even anachronistic and if they think so that's okay. Not because I'm arrogant but because the older I get the more I realize how relative a certain way of dressing is if you look at it from a distance. In other cultures, I would wear something completely different and I would laugh at these guys in their suits and ties. Moreover, one must never forget that we enter this world naked and we will leave it the same way.



An interview with Bernhard Roetzel

Moderators: alden, Costi

I've made a short interview with Bernhard Roetzel for a Danish blog. As most of you will know, Mr. Roetzel is the author of Gentleman, one of the classic books on timeless dressing. Here's an English version of the interview. I hope you'll enjoy it.

How do you look at the difference between Italian and English style?

In Italy style in menswear has the purpose to make a man look elegant and attractive. The English dress in a way that makes them look like aristocrats or "old money". They don't care so much about how sexy they look. They know that many women are not very fond of men who are too handsome and too well-dressed.

The English will rather wear a slightly scruffy bespoke suit that was handed down from their grandfather (or was bought at Oxfam) while the Italians usually are super smart. The Italians take their style very seriously, they usually lack the ability to laugh at themselves. Thus they look great but they are very often slightly boring company.

Italians in general tend to follow new fashions more than the English. I remember the time when the Woolrich Parka was new. Everybody in Italy wore it. It was really like a uniform and I couldn't stand the sight of the thing after a couple of days. The English are more hesitant to copy new looks. English style is all about classic and the only thing the add is the famous "twist".

What is dressing with style?

Style is usually something you acquire rather than being born with it. Thus all stylish people should be very humble because they haven't invented what they wear in 99 percent of the time (this includes myself). Style is very much about copying and imitating. It's similar to learning an instrument. I play the guitar myself and I have spent many years trying to sound like someone else. Sometimes you start to sound like yourself or look like yourself the moment when you realize that copying will not take you further. Or when you realize that all the time you spend studying others won't make you a master yourself. So dressing with style is a mixture of copying and making the best of one's abilities.

What inspires your own dressing?

When I was 21 I tried to look exactly like the Englishmen I admired. Some were characters on TV like John Steed or Siegfried Farnon, others were people from real life that I had seen on the street or in books. Then I started to discover Ivy League looks. Later there was a time in my life when I got in touch with Italian style which brought some new influences. Now I no longer try to look like an Englishman or American or Italian. I am what I am and I don't need to hide this fact by dressing like a Sloane Ranger or someone who lives in Naples. Stylish men in Germany have great difficulties accepting the fact that they are still Germans after all even if we eat Pasta all the time. My tailor is still English, my shoes are still made in Northampton and my shirtings come mainly from Switzerland but I mix everything more freely.

In a way my style of dress is very boring because I wear the same things for a very long time. In summer my everyday dress has been khaki pants, a dress shirt, an English saddle leather belt with brass buckles, suede shoes and a V neck sweater for 20 years or so. There is nothing better than khaki pants in summer. Of course I sometimes wear pink pants or red pants or green pants but khaki is still the best. What inspires me? The cloths I find. And my own feeling. I remember feeling that camel is a great colour last fall and now I see it in every collection.

How do you look at the future of the suit?

Only God knows the future. But I think that the suit cannot be replaced. Dresscodes will probably change in some way but the suit will be here until the world comes to its end. If you look at a car from the 1920s it's beautiful but it is definitely outdated. The suit has been created in the same decade but it is still young. Again I must think of guitars. Look at the Telecaster or the Les Paul. They are both the definitive solid body guitars but someone who doesn't know would never guess that they were both released in the early fifties. Some things cannot be improved. Especially if form and function are in perfect harmony.


The Classicist: A Quarter Century of Style at Alan Flusser's
by Jared Paul Stern
Feb 7th 2011


Alan Flusser, author of 2002's Dressing the Man, is our foremost arbiter elegantiarum in matters sartorial; the book remains the reigning bible of men's style. In 1981 he published his first book Making the Man and opened his first custom tailoring shop in New York City in '86; a year later his Master of the Universe wardrobe created for Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street made him an instant icon. Now on the 25th anniversary of the original's debut, Flusser is re-launching the shop with a new look in the space on E. 48th St. it has inhabited since 2002. In recent years someone else handled the day-to-day operations of the shop for Flusser though he remained available for consultations. Now he's decided to take up the reigns once again and usher in a new era of elegance.

"My original vision for the shop had always been a kind of imaginary Savile Row tailor's shop–meets Park Avenue men's club–meets Gertrude Stein for a bullshot," Flusser tells us. "In other words, an environment suffused with Old World taste and totems." As a younger and more 'downtown' crowd has increasingly taken to the merits of fine tailoring, however, Flusser felt it was time for an update, both decor and clothes-wise. Having introduced a slimmer fitting, more body conscious silhouette – the "Vanderbilt" – to his repertoire in 2008, Flusser "wanted the look of the shop to more closely reflect that sleeker sartorial idiom." Enter silver walls, alligator skin tables, 1940s leather and chrome furniture, black lacquer fittings, and of course a cocktail bar. [cont'd

"I've stepped back in and basically redesigned everything from floors to ceiling, pillows to picture frames, shirt collars to tie widths," Flusser notes. "In addition to the aesthetics of the business, I also decided that the hand-sewn, individually-cut, hand-recorded tradition-tied male custom tailoring business needed an infusion of modernity." That comes in the form of a digitized inventory of each client's purchases. "Should they be in momentary need of some ensemble coordinating advice or direction relative to the correct dress for a particular social occasion," Flusser says, "everything is no further than our finger tips." He also recently launched an iPhone app, BeSpeak, a "personal mobile stylist". Don't expect high-water trousers or bum-freezer jackets however; Flusser promises finely-crafted clothes that truly transcend fashion, wearable for twenty years or more. Take a look at the gallery for a tour of the most stylish digs in town.



Style File: Alan Flusser, designer and author

By Lisa Irizarry The Star-Ledger
When the makers of the 1987 film "Wall Street," were looking for someone to design the wardrobe for Michael Douglas' character, they turned to Alan Flusser - because he means business. The 63-year-old West Orange native has a cologne bearing his name, a custom clothing shop in Manhattan, a line of ready-to-wear fashions in Stein Mart stores, and a Coty Award. He also wrote "Dressing the Man: "Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion" - one of the bibles of men's fashion - and he is currently working on an authorized biography of Ralph Lauren.
Did we mention he was also on the international best-dressed list several times and has designed clothes for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine?
"The major reason I became interested in fashion was my parents, who were both very stylish, particularly my father," Flusser explains. "He was passionate about fine clothes and enjoyed getting dressed up; and he was very admiring of the famous Duke of Windsor as well as some of Hollywood's male fashion icons like Fred Astaire and Cary Grant."
"I remember on many occasions when the random Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers film would appear on T.V. and my parents would sit my brother and me down to watch it with them," he adds.
Flusser's design career started unexpectedly at 18 years old, after a girlfriend's father asked Flusser to accompany him to a Paterson tailor shop to help him make his selections. "Impressed by his new look, he introduced me to some of his friends who were getting their clothes made elsewhere," he explains. "I would charge both them and the tailor for my 'services.'" Later, instead of money, Flusser asked for free custom made clothes as his finder's fee. "As a result, since eighteen, I have pretty much been wearing clothes of my own design."
Flusser also wrote "Making the Man: The Insider's Guide to Buying Men's Clothes," "Clothes and the Man: The Principles of Fine Men's Dress," and "Style and the Man: How and Where to Buy Fine Men's Clothes." He says that being a designer perfectly suits him because his personal style of dress is something no one else could truly understand. He was wearing specially-made shocking pink wool men's socks with black suede
Gucci shoes when we talked.
"I will wear anything - my clothes or others - as long as they fit my criteria for long-term stylishness. I like to mix things together and come up with something different and improbable each day. I have probably never worn the same outfit twice." He had Gucci change the buckle on his black suede shoes to a buckle it used to have on earlier versions of the shoe that he preferred. "Even at Gucci I tend to want it my way," Flusser adds.
No one can dispute Flusser's style credentials, but he's "ecclectic" and will add a pair of sweats into the mix of his outfit choices.
"Were one to take a look in my closet for the first time, they might be hard-pressed to rank one category of clothing above another," he says. "Having collected clothes for over forty years, my assembly of 'fringe' genres like hosiery, pocket squares, suspenders and neckerscarfs would likely overwhelm the viewer.
"I will pair monogrammed velvet slippers with sweat pants, cashmere and silk neck scarves with tee shirts, jeans with custom made suit jackets, or silk scarves with knit sport shirts and shorts," Flusser adds. "I like mixing vintage and new clothes, cheap with pricey, formal and informal. For me, dressing has always been a practiced art form and thus a creative means of self-expression."
Fashion Philosophy: "I will wear anything -- my clothes or others -- as long as they fit my criteria for long-term stylishness. I like to mix things together and come up with something different and improbable each day. I have probably never worn the same outfit twice."
Can't Live Without: "My handy pictures of my daughters."
Favorite Grooming Fix: "I use Lancaster products for moisturizer and after-sun moisturizer. As for shampoo, I use Biolage."



By Nicholas Storey
This idiosyncratic book takes the reader on a fascinating journey, from high-end grooming and care, including open razors, strops and Belgian waterstone; silver-tipped badger shaving brushes, shaving soaps and D R Harris's Pick-me-up, loofahs and sponges, through colognes and scents, including history, constituents, triggers and individual colognes, then into dressing accessories, such as slippers, watches, cufflinks and shirt studs, and tie pins, even how to assess precious stones as well as a fascinating account, from primary sources, of the evolution of the dinner jacket-Tuxedo. Moreover, if you want to know not just how to mix drinks but something of their history, as well as the history of beer, cider and mead; sweets of all kinds, chocolate, tea and coffee; matching food and drink (and not just food and wine) and then every essential fact about tobacco, pipes, Havana cigars, cigarettes and snuff, it's all here, as well as where to buy the products that are mentioned. But it does not stop there. The journey continues on to a consideration of some of London's fascinating venues, including pubs, clubs, restaurants, hotels and bars; some nice points of conduct and the author's reflections on such things as feminine wiles (what women really look for) and even how to stop a fight. There is a chapter on selecting and buying gifts for the lady in your life, a dictionary of Anglo-American sartorial terms and it ends, as it begins, with thoughts of England as home. The author has submitted the book in draft to the scrutiny of leading world experts on the various topics and so, as well as being entertaining, it is backed by authority.


The author Nicholas Storey

Book Review: History of Men’s Fashion
By Simon Crompton
February 2, 2009
History of Men’s Fashion: What the Well Dressed Man is Wearing, by Nicholas Storey, is a book evidently written with real passion for the subject.
Personal touches abound, such as Storey’s relation of the fact that Lord Nelson’s hat was stolen from public display “in a planned raid on the National Maritime Museum by some utter tyke(s)”. Equally, Storey suggests that the English taste for wearing red socks with a dark suit “always raise[s] a smile” because “a glimpse of the daring and dashing and dangerous lurking beneath the trousers suggest[s] that these qualities may lurk in the wearer too.”
This personal, and subjective, touch makes the book enjoyable reading. But it is also the book’s greatest weakness. I would not recommend it to anyone looking for a primer on menswear, which is ostensibly what it aims to be.
Facts, stories and originations are the book’s strength. I did not know that originally soft felt hats were unacceptable for a man to wear before the end of the London Summer Season. Neither did I know that steel-ribbed umbrellas were invented in 1852 by Samuel Fox as a way of disposing of surplus corset stays.
His description of Beau Brummell is instructive. “Brummell’s ‘exquisite propriety’ was the reverse of foppery – which is generally (mistakenly) associated even now with Brummell’s name,” he says. “There was nothing remarkable about his dress except that it was modest, subdued and most proper to the occasion and of the best materials and making. Strictly, he was a Dandy and certainly not a Popinjay.”
Storey’s point is well argued. And it speaks to our loss of language over the years (or possibly of the people to describe) that few could separate those three words, fop, dandy and popinjay, with decent definitions.
The section of History of Men’s Fashion on evening dress and more formal wear is the most impressive for depth of research. Most people are familiar with black dinner jackets. The slightly more sartorial are aware that midnight blue is a perfectly acceptable and indeed more practical alternative (it looks more black than black under artificial light). But few realise it can be virtually any colour and that Noel Coward wore them in brown. With matching tie and pumps, made at the hands of Douglas Hayward.
Indeed, Storey tells us that “when Brummell began the process which eventually led to monochrome evening dress, his evening coat was…blue, the waistcoat was white, his pantaloon trousers…black and his stockings striped.” It’s hard to argue with anyone about the etiquette of black tie when that little get-up was its starting point.
However, the space allocated to evening wear speaks also of the relevance of this book. Of the 182 pages, almost half is dedicated to chapters four through eight – on formal morning dress, evening dress, leisure wear, sporting dress and hats. Unless the reader of this book goes to enough formal events to justify buying two white waistcoats, or requires hunting breeches, much of this will only be of academic interest.
Which is great, for me. I am probably in the early stages of being an academic on the subject and the facts here are riveting, fascinating, indispensable.
But anyone else will find the book frustrating. It is not really a history of men’s fashion. It includes historical notes and facts during a personal discussion of areas of men’s dress.
Neither is it what the well-dressed man is wearing. That sub-title is a quote from Bertie Wooster, in Right-ho! Jeeves. But what is described is not, despite what Storey might hope, what well-dressed men are wearing today. It is a description of what a very narrow band of British society should be wearing, according to the author.
Throughout the book Storey instructs the reader what he should buy and in what quantity. Under socks he says “have three dozen pairs of wool and nylon half hose” plus “say, six pairs of silk half hose evening stockings and the same quantity of woollen shooting stockings”. That’s 48 pairs of socks, without the ankle socks permitted on the tennis court. How many people do you know who need that many socks?
The recommendations for where to buy your clothes are equally narrow. The best of Jermyn Street and Savile Row is recommended, along with a few less-pricey options. But almost everywhere the reader is encouraged to go bespoke, often because, as is admitted with the riding boots recommended, you actually can’t get them ready to wear.
The attitude is best summed up by the section “the necessary hats to have,” which includes a black top hat, a grey top hat, an opera hat and a hunting-weight silk hat.
Indeed, one could argue that some of the outfits recommended in here would not be in the spirit of Brummell – they would neither be modest or subdued.
At Wimbledon he recommends you wear a blazer, white ducks, co-respondent shoes, a cravat and a panama hat. Even in the members’ enclosure that would hardly be subdued. At Twickenham, meanwhile, Storey says “one should wear cords, a jumper, the Barbour, a cap and stout country shoes.” In what sense “should” one wear that? Is it a tradition going back to the Edwardians?
This book is a treasure trove of facts about British menswear. But it talks as much about the history of tennis (from the Egyptians) as it does about the raw materials of suits. And gives even more space to a rant about the disappearance of country life in the UK, the EU’s agricultural policy and cynical real estate developers.
To the right man, I recommend it. But if you don’t own many books on menswear, buy anything by Alan Flusser first.


Also by Nicholas Storey