Men's Style Anxiety: A Genealogy

I. Introduction

If you are wondering why men dress the way they do today, if you wonder why men are afraid to dress with more style and formality, if you are trying to decide if you really want to up your style and formality, the following history will help you to see how men's style got to where it is, where male anxiety about dress comes from, and what this all means for a man who might want to dress better today.

II. Men's Style before our Democratic Era The following story of mens style is a very western one: it is focused at first on Europe and eventually comes in the mid-20th century to focus on the U.S. It is also a story rooted in economic and political realities, as I believe most things in social relations and behavior come down to economics and politics (and, in fact, that politics usually just come down to economics). It begins in what is called the ancien rgime, the last few centuries when Europe was still dominated by monarchies and the nobility before roughly 1800. In the latter half of the 17th century, the Sun King, Louis XIV, made France and specifically his royal court at Versailles the undisputed center of western politics, culture and fashion. Part of his governing strategy was to keep as much of the French nobility at Versailles as much of the time as possible, indebted to him and constantly kissing up to him for favors. Thus the architecture of Versailles itself had to be not only impressively imposing, it had to be enticing. The fashion in men's dress he instituted was ridiculously expensive and ornate. Every aspect of Versailles had to serve as golden handcuffs keeping Louis' friends under his eye and potential enemies under his thumb at court. French life as dictated by Louis at court set the fashion for the rest of Europe. Nobles all over Europe built mini-Versailles and imitated the Sun King as much as possible. Even Frederick the Great, the great Prussian King of the mid-18th century made French, not his native German, the language of his Versailles-esque court just outside of Berlin. All things French, including court fashions, dominated the sensibilities of western nobility in this final century of the ancien rgime. French style was the style. For all of history, going back as far as we have records, all the way up to and including the ancien rgime, most western societies have been divided into basically (if you will indulge me in keeping things simple) two strata: nobility and commoners. Usually, the nobility owned everything, and commoners, the vast majority of humanity, worked for them, making their expensive lives possible. Other very small groups between the nobility and the masses have always existed such as various priesthoods and other bureaucratic professions who served the nobility and did not have to make a living as laborers, but who also did not enjoy all of the privileges of nobility. There have also often been those who made a living off of trade and similar pursuits who may have owned a small amount of capital. Not tied to land and needing to be centrally located for trade, this small segment generally congregated in towns and cities (in Old French they were called burgeis town-dwellers) and began expanding their power and wealth, though modestly, from the Middle Ages on. This group would become the bourgeoisie of the 19th century as the Industrial Revolution and greater political involvement dramatically increased their wealth and power. Before 1800, however, this middle class was rather small, as was the aristocracy. Almost everyone was a peasant (including, probably, most of your ancestors if they were Europeans) with no hope of improving their

situation and with no thought of their children or grandchildren living an existence any better. In the ancien rgimeyour lot in life was practically set in stone at birth. If you had a noble birth, you would live the life of a noble, a common birth, the life of a commoner. Upward mobility was not a concept. Sumptuary laws controlled what could or could not be worn by individuals. It was actually illegal for a peasant to dress like a noble, and no commoner would think of doing so anyway. A peasant was as likely to become an elephant as a noble, so wearing a richly brocaded coat was as nonsensical as wearing a trunk and huge ears. Additionally, aristocrats dressed in elaborately expensive ways that could never be imitated by commoners. Some towns people did dress nicer than peasants, aping the aristocracy to some degree, but severely limited by cost and by the law. In the ancien rgime, you knew exactly who someone was by how they dressed. Who they were was determined at birth, through no choice or action of their own, and this was proclaimed by the clothes they were allowed and could afford to wear.

III. Atomization of Power and the Rise of the Individual By the end of the 18th century, however, powerful forces had been at work. The scattering of centralized power out to individuals what I will call atomization would soon topple the ancien rgime, changing the West for ever. Protestantism had begun in the early 1500s as a powerful force of atomization. Where a relationship to God and salvation had been centralized in the institution of the Catholic Church, Protestantism proposed that every individual needed only scripture and faith to maintain their own personal relationship to God. It made religion an individual matter (though in reality most religious leaders quickly realized the personal benefits of re-centralizing power around themselves). In 1776, Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations formulating for the West free market economics, a force that had already begun to decentralize the wealth of the aristocracy and place more wealth and opportunity in the hands of more individuals. The third form of atomization I am concerned with also found expression in 1776 with the American Declaration of Independence. Though the American Revolution did nothing to overturn theancien rgime in Europe, it did provide an inspiring example that bolstered the European move towards republican government (republican not referring to the modern political party but to a governmental system of representation as opposed to monarchy). Republican governing structures would accelerate the decentralization of power that had once been in the hands of the few and distribute it more evenly to individuals. This came to a head in Europe with the French Revolution begun in 1789 and was dramatically symbolized by the beheading of Louis XVI in 1793. This was the beginning of the end of the ancien rgime, and the dawning of the Age of the Individual, an age of new freedoms, opportunities, responsibilities and anxieties. Individuals were now in a position to do much for themselves that used to be done only by centralized institutions. They were also faced with new decisions about themselves and their lives that used to be simply determined by their birth. Thus, by around 1800, the west was characterized by a rapidly growing atomized spirituality and moral thought, atomized economics and political power in an entirely new way. This massive social upheaval could not help but be reflected in what men wore, what they were now free to choose to wear, and the revolution from the aristocratic styles of the ancien rgime to the more middle class style of the 19th century was one of the most dramatic shifts in style menswear had ever experienced.

IV. Men's Style after the French Revolution: Beau Brummell

This shift was embodied and led by George Beau Brummell, born in 1778. Brummells father was one of those few commoners who as a bureaucrat escaped a life of labor, benefiting from many lucrative positions serving English nobility and from a marriage to a woman from another wealthy middle-class family. Thus, though not noble, George grew up on a small country estate (meaning only some 800 acres) with some of the privileges of the nobility such as an education at Eton and Oxford. In the mid-1790s he rode in the Prince of Wales Dragoon Guard where he became friends with the Prince himself, the future George IV. Just as he embodied the revolution in style around 1800, he also embodied the realization of many middle-class aspirations. Brummells personal style was characterized by two things: understatement and fastidiousness. He fully rejected all of the silk, brocade, lace, plumage, bright colors, powdered wigs, makeup and other pomp of the ancien rgimes aristocrats - French style - in favor of very understated dress influenced by his time in the military and especially by the relaxed clothes worn by one who lives on the vast estate of an English country house and often enjoys the elite but earthy pastime of riding. This newer look was characterized by short hair, a preference for wool, few and muted colors, and a general lack of ornamentation. His fastidiousness was expressed in his hygiene, his obsession with fit, and his constant laundering. He was the quintessential Dandy, whose understated minimalism was the opposite of the flamboyant, continental extravagance of the ancien rgimes Fop or Macaroni. Though Dandy would come to mean its opposite, eventually becoming a synonym for Fop, for the style revolution led by Brummell it denoted masculine simplicity at its strictest, the standard still dominating men's style today. This penchant for outdoor, practical, more egalitarian clothing had already been shaping English dress for decades. Brummell was, as many icons are, not the inventor of an entirely new idea but the culminating embodiment of long-developing trends. For the English in general, the style exemplified by Brummell in the Regency era was also as much of a rejection of French cultural dominance as it was anything else, made possible by the wealth and power England was steadily building through its growing empire. The moment was also perfect for English men's style to set the trend for the continent. The English tradition of a powerful representative body going back to the 13th century Magna Carta, had already cast England as the democratic nation of Europe in the 18th century. Thus, all things English appealed to republican sensibilities in much of Europe around 1800. England's gradual eclipsing of France on the world stage gave its fashions the crucial connotation of power. Finally, by the late 18th century, court life - at all courts but especially at Versailles - had come to be seen as the epitome of artificiality and superficiality. The picture of Frenchified nobles in powdered wigs, make-up and long, stiff silk coats bowing and scraping before the king while stabbing each other in the back encapsulated everything people felt was wrong with the ancien rgime. Regardless of how accurate it really was, the image of the English lord at his country house far from the royal court, hunting on his own earth, generously treating his tenants with his famous English hospitality, and dressed in the more natural, wooly costume of the rider represented naturalness, authenticity and a greater degree of democratic freedom (even if most peers actually spent half the year or more in London, bowing, scraping and back-stabbing in silk coats). For all of these reasons and more, England could not help but become the leader of masculine style in the 19th century. Captain Brummell eventually irritated the Prince of Wales to the point of being cut off as he exhausted all of the wealth he inherited from his father with gambling and his exorbitant spending on clothes, and in the end he had to flee debtor's prison to France. Before doing so, he established the new very British and very unaristocratic look of the Dandy, a look even adopted by the Prince of Wales and many other aristocrats, as well as by that most ambitious social climber of all, Napolon Bonaparte. The French had dominated and steered mens style in the West since Louis XIV. From Brummell until the end of World War II, Britain would be the

undisputed leader in mens style. It is this British tradition instituted by Brummell that gives us todays suit and tie among other ensembles. (A charming video with a bit more on Brummell can be foundhere.) Many at the time considered this style revolution a loss of dignity, of refinement, of formality and of style that expresses power the very thing one complains men are doing to menswear today. From the perspective of the ancien rgime, the Dandy's sparse style was just that. The taste of the middle class had become ascendant, and there was a decided shift towards comfort and the look of sports (i.e., riding). This is the accusation leveled at todays adult male in his running shoes, shorts, t-shirt, and ball cap and accurately so. But let us be honest enough to remember that the rise of middle-class taste and the widespread proclivity for sportswear did become the rule already with Brummell and has been dominant for over two centuries now.

V. The First Style Anxiety of the Individual Man: Resentment of [Former] Peers The post-revolutionary, democratic, capitalist, protestant world of the 19th and 20th centuries has been one of great individual anxiety. When, before the Revolution, one was born into a class with no hope of escaping it, many decisions were already made by the class system: what one did for a living, what one wore, with whom one associated, how one entertained oneself, etc. Most of one's life was dictated by one's birth, and who one is was already determined, making social navigation quite easy. But in the new, atomized world of individual rights and individual possibility, nothing is set in stone. Especially in the States, a country that has never had a legal aristocracy. One born into the starkest poverty may dream of one day living in great wealth, dressed to the nines, socializing with the best and brightest. This anxious aspiration is, of course, formalized as the American middle-class ethos, the American Dream. But this freedom and opportunity in the bold, new democratic world is fraught with risk (and is actually more illusory and elusive than it seems). On the one hand, the message is very strong that you should rise and make as much of yourself as you can this is your freedom. On the other hand, the message is that no one in a democratic, Protestant society is better than anyone else that is equality. In the paradox between freedom and equality, self-improvement is condemned as it is promoted. Yes, the farmers son has a chance, no matter how slight, at becoming an extremely wealthy banker in the city, but his family, friends and other peers back in his farming community will have an almost impossible time continuing to accept him as one of theirs if he does. Were he to return, talking and acting like the wealthy, dressed like the wealthy, his social interactions would be uncomfortable and unnatural in ways they never were before he left and changed. With his original country manners and speech, his assimilation into a wealthy, urban social sphere has probably been no easier. To some degree, he will always be a man with a foot in both worlds, and never a man standing solidly in either. While we in the States may not be born into classes by law, most of us harbor a deep if unconscious belief that class lines are real and not to be crossed - especially not by our own peers. Upward mobility generally has very real social costs, and people are not happy for the successes of others as often as they should be. You may choose to dress better than your [former] peers, but you do so with the almost certain likelihood of stirring anxiety that will be expressed as animosity by them. Sure, your old friend is just as free to dress better, but only at the risk of alienating all of his current peers. It is easier for him to try to pressure you to come back to his level, or he may need to cut ties with you so as not to seem infected by what his peers will certainly consider your uppishness. As it is hard to be fully accepted by a new peer group, it is just as hard to remain accepted by the one in which

one no longer seems to fit. Simply wearing new clothes can easily stir up all of this anxiety of the internalized class expectations of others. Internalized social expectations can be even more powerful and binding than external systems of law. The freedom we now have externally is still balanced to an astonishing degree by the constraints we cling to internally.

VI. The Second Style Anxiety of the Individual Man: Questions of Authenticity

If a peasant in the 1700s traveling a road saw someone approaching dressed like a prince, he would never ask, Just who does he think he is? The answer would be rather apparent he thinks he is a prince, because he is a prince. The peasant would just get the hell off of the road as quickly as possible before being run down by the prince's horse. But seeing a man dressed up all the way in the 1800s - certainly in the 1900s and 2000s many may more easily ask themselves, Just who does he think he is? and give him a dirty look when passing him on the street. This mistrust of the well-dressed is real in Europe, but in America, with its idealization of the paradoxical values of equality and freedom, it is even more pronounced. The question, just who does he think he is? is only ever a breath away. This is clearly related to the resentment just discussed above felt by anyone who encounters someone dressed as his superior in a world where such superiority is no longer institutionally established. But there is more to it than that. After the French Revolution, any man was much more able to claim for himself the highest virtues of manhood. Earlier, these qualities were intrinsically those of the nobility, but the more democratic and individualistic society became, the more any man could be noble, simply based on his perceived character. Where a gentleman was formerly a man belonging to the gentry, the untitled but landed nobility, the modern gentleman could be any man of any birth who appeared and behaved correctly. Similarly courtesy, the behavior of those at court, has become something that can be shown by those who will never in their lifetimes come near a royal court. At the other end of the scale, vulgar and mean used to refer to commoners, meaning simply common. They were descriptive rather than insulting, as it was not a commoner's moral failing to have been born common. Now in the new, democratic world any man can be labelled vulgar or mean without regard to his birth. The literal, biological meaning of breeding has also been replaced by the moral concept of the manners, speech and dress one is taught by one's parents and peers. These words, noble, gentle, vulgar, and mean are almost only used with these moral meanings today, entrenching the idea that one has a choice to behave in a socially acceptable way or not. This kind of purely moral understanding divorced from any memory of class implications is only possible in the postrevolutionary, atomized world of free individuals responsible for themselves. In the ancien rgime, these words described the class into which one was born. The nature one was assumed to have based on birth was not a moral choice but a social fact. Now, as the internalization of the class system and its transformation from a description of the external world into an internal complex of moral decisions was accelerating after the Revolution, a gentleman could be any man who embodies, or seems to embody, certain virtues, just as any man could now behave in a vulgar manner. As had been the case with inborn nobility before the revolution, this new nobility of character could best be shown and recognized through external markers like manners, speech, and, of course, dress. In fact, a large part of Brummell's ideal of the Dandy was a man who embodied and projected the virtues attributed to the aristocracy through his paradoxically understated dress, that, at great cost and with much effort, proclaimed earthy authenticity. But now the markers of nobility were no longer controlled by birth or law and could be

adopted by anyone, at least by anyone who could afford them. All could theoretically be noble now, and this new kind of nobility was not certified by any institutional authority. The man who wore, said and did all of the right things whose bearing might best be described as noble might also just be the most suspicious type of all. Where no one would question if the prince in the 1700s was noble or not (he simply was) the man who wore all the right clothes and who displayed all the right manners post-revolution could raise the suspicions of many as to whether his intentions were genuinely noble or not. In an age when nobility could be learned out of style and etiquette guides and acquired from merchants, authenticity of character could be questioned in a whole new way. This created greater anxiety about being sure just whom one was dealing with and how one presented oneself to and was perceived by others. Of course, Brummell's new look was not cheap, and, as his eventual poverty demonstrates, required substantial financial resources. The poorest men were still locked out of the game, as they are today. The aristocracy had always already won the game without playing it, since the point of the game is to be like them. It was in the growing middle class with its longing to finally stand among the aristocracy that the desire to look and behave correctly was the strongest as was the distrust of anyone who was trying to look or behave correctly. To be a desirable goal, only a few from the middle-class can really make it, as it would be meaningless - if not vulgar - if everyone did. It is for middle-class men to be on the offensive by always looking and behaving correctly and to be on the defensive by constantly questioning others who try to look and behave correctly. This moral king of the social hill is a thoroughly middle-class game. This enterprise and its attendant anxiety is still the game the middle-class plays today, and the strong internalization of class expectations makes it a deeply moral one difficult to differentiate from the religious beliefs with which it has come to be thoroughly blended. Thus, in bourgeois modernity, God himself can require you to dress up on Sunday and be offended when you use vulgar language, while the devil is pictured as the most well-manicured smooth-talker of them all.

VII. The Third Style Anxiety of the Individual Man: Projection of Socially Acceptable Masculinity In addition to threatening the peers one grows up with and to coming off as an inauthentic and an untrustworthy cad, the well-dressed man faces another new anxiety after the Revolution: being considered effeminate. Effeminacy in the early- and mid-19th century was not a sexual or biological concept but referred to being considered too occupied with concerns deemed feminine to the detriment of masculine concerns. Looking good and working hard to do so became, it was decided after the revolution, a feminine pursuit. In the increasingly industrial and commercialized 19th century, for the first time a man could get the majority, if not all of his clothes ready-to-wear from a merchant. Before that, wealthier men had their clothes made bespoke by tailors and poorer men's clothes were made by family members. Shopping had already been women's work, and 19th century marketers imbued it with even more femininity as they lured women into the pleasure palaces that were the newly invented department stores. Now that clothes were procured on a shopping trip, selecting and acquiring them took on a whole new feminized aspect. Additionally, looking at all like you put any more than the minimum of effort or thought into your appearance was now considered unmanly. In the ancien rgime, of course, men were as done up as women if not more so, but Brummells minimal, militarized aesthetic made simplicity the core of projecting masculinity with

one's appearance. Paradoxically, though Brummell spent inordinate amounts of time and money on his wardrobe, the style he initiated would forever more seek to project not caring too much, as if inattention indicated authenticity. This ideal is today embodied by the majority who have come to really not care, where it can be called slovenliness, and is one cultivated by the few conscious dressers, who call it sprezzatura. By the end of the 19th century, the anxiety of appearing effeminate by caring too much was compounded by the newly created medical and legal category of homosexuality. Dressing well and projecting socially acceptable masculinity required an almost impossibly delicate balance. --Thus, after the revolution, personal choices leading to opportunity and risks opened up as never before, and men had to carefully use their appearance to project the masculinity sanctioned by their peers, to achieve proper social integration, and to appear morally trustworthy, all while working very hard not to appear to care about what they wear. The anxiety of this paradox is more than alive today and is expressed every time a man dressed up for something points to his wife and says, Oh I dont know. She just buys it for me and tells me to wear it. She does the shopping. It fills the man who would feel slighted if you accused him of not knowing how to knot a tie, but would feel equally threatened if you accused him of spending time and care shopping for ties.

VIII. Men's Style Continues to Develop

Despite all of this middle-class anxiety welling up in the new, post-revolutionary world, men did continue to care about what they wore very much after Brummell, and mens style did continue to develop. Throughout the 19th century, the striving for sober simplicity and respectability was maintained but continually modified by Brummell's original desire for comfort and this desires attendant consequence of bringing sportswear into daily dress. Everyone wanted to look like an equestrian of the English countryside. It implied the wealthy lifestyle of an estate holder along with what seemed to be a rugged, healthy, authentic masculinity. Similarly, by the end of the 19th century, team sports had become popular, with the school varieties having a particularly elite association with the then very rare privilege of a university education. Sweaters, for example, became acceptable for men to wear around their homes, while they had previously only been acceptable for sports. In the 20th century sweaters would become acceptable for public and even professional wear, and, by the 21st century, they can be downright dressy in many contexts. Blazers and sports coats were also making the transition from only being appropriate for sports to being worn socially around the turn of the century. Men learning to dress today can be a bit perplexed by the way the adjective sports is used to describe clothing. Just why does one call a tweed jacket a sports coat? Why are long sleeve, buttoned shirts with collars called sports shirts? What one must keep in mind is the history of the way sports has been used to describe clothes. Remember that the 19th century began with all of Europe wanting to look like the English lord trotting around his estate. For most of the 19th century, the concept of sports primarily meant riding a horse, for a hunt or other sport, though it also referred to other activities like shooting and fishing. By the end of the century competitive sports had become an important part of school activities, and sports also began to refer to what was worn for games like polo, cricket, rugby, golf and tennis, i.e., what are now called polos (originally for tennis), rugbies, cricket/tennis sweaters, and even button-downs (originally for

polo). It is the more English games, and not American inventions like basketball and baseball, that influenced men's style in the early twentieth century most. Thus, at the turn of the century sports in regard to clothing certainly still meant the tweed of the Englishman on his estate, but it also referred to items like the multi-colored blazers one wore to and from the pitch or court, as well as polos, rugbies, etc. If you watch Chariots of Fire, there is a scene early on where clubs at Cambridge are gathered in a hall - right before the Great Court Run scene. The clothing worn in these two scenes is sports clothing, even though the only students actually engaged in sports are the two men who race. All of the colors, on the hats, sweaters, blazers, scarves, etc. function the same way the stripes on a regimental tie function do: to denote affiliation, here with schools. They are similar to the team jerseys and hats men still wear today, though at that time one would only wear the colors of a school one has actually attended. No one would wear a cricket sweater from, say, Eton or Caius, simply because they are a fan if they have not been a student there. Later the commercial value of the desire to belong would be exploited in making colors into merchandise for those not on the team. This leads to some need for caution discussed here. American sporting habits began to influence men's style in the 20th century, though generally only the most expensive ones. Despite being surrounded by the sea in every direction, the English gentleman's style was most influential in his landlocked pursuits like hunts, polo and cricket. Though continuing to live out their Anglophile fantasies by playing tennis, polo, and even staging fox hunts, wealthy Americans living on the Northeastern coast, in contrast, became devoted leisure-time sailors. This brought even more nautical colors and patterns and items into the American vocabulary of sports clothing. This was accompanied by the tendency of wealthy Americans to frequent seaside resorts where ever lighter versions of traditional sports items were developed. The new ideal of the tanned, wealthy American at the beach, which would become so important to the style exported by Hollywood, innovated on a century of British leisure style. In sum, today one can use the adjective sports to describe clothing you actually wear to play basketball with your friends, or one can use sports the way fashion designers and style historians do to refer t o what wealthy Brits and Yankees have traditionally worn, and maybe no longer do, for their expensive, leisurely pastimes. Sports in the historical sense basically means what the rich and powerful once wore when on vacation from not working. A great embodiment of the continual drift towards comfort and sportswear is the 20th centurys most famous Prince of Wales, and certainly one of its most important trend setters, David Windsor (a.k.a. the Duke of Windsor and King Edward VIII). In the 1920s and 30s, this Prince of Wales was the most powerful leader in mens style. He took the gentry's tweeds and seamlessly blended them with traditional tartans and knitting patterns as well as with golf, tennis and Palm Beach style. Called the Beau Brummell of the 20th century, he was the culmination of sports style. Much of this style was influenced by the American casualness he so loved, as he detested British and especially royal formality (at least until he found himself in unofficial exile from it). Americans loved to see their own proclivity for comfort reflected back to them in the stylish dress of the future Edward VIII. His penchant for sports clothing produced a much bolder and less conservative style than that of his father. Windsor's love of American casualness coincided with another development that would slowly move the center of men's style from England to the States - the rise of Hollywood. Early on, the most stylish men of Hollywood, Astaire, Grant, Cooper and others, were all following the lead of Brits like the Prince of Wales, but eventually Hollywood came to exert its own style dominance by mid-century as America took a leading political role on the world stage and Hollywood had established its global entertainment preeminence.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, men's style was also influenced by other developments like those in technology. For example, improved indoor temperature control combined with war-time rationing eventually changed suit waistcoats from necessities to rare oddities. Where men had once had to spend considerable amounts of time outdoors year-round, the automobile reduced that time to the brief moments between a climate-controlled building and a car parked nearby. This, even more than JFK's famous distaste for hats, produced the hat-less head that has dominated men since the 1960s. (Despite the persistent legend, JFK did wear a hat to his inauguration - a silk topper to go with his morning coat.)

IX. The Revolution that Overthrew Brummell From 1929 to 1945 the masculinity of American men was first threatened by a prolonged period of scarce employment and then bolstered by fighting and winning the largest war to date. After these 16 years of intense fear, sacrifice, and a reordering of priorities, adult men of the 1950s projected entrenched stability with the most limited and sober form of dress yet, one accompanied by a concept of separate spheres for the genders stricter than anything since the Victorian period. This time of palpable conformity in mens style soon faced a violent swinging of the pendulum. In the 1960s, the limited concept of masculine dress that had continued and developed since Brummell was violently dethroned, though not entirely exiled. At first, the leadership again came from England. There, the Peacock Revolution was underway, bringing in vibrant colors beyond the standard palette of grey, grey, grey or grey, and playing with patterns, materials, cuts and silhouettes in surprising ways. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the children of those who survived the Great Depression and the last World War were coming of age, and they knew nothing of the privations and seriousness their parents had faced. They grew up in a world with every luxury where marketers for the first time aggressively targeted them, teaching them from youth on like their parents that they should have what they want. When these Baby Boomers became college aged, many of them felt quite free to question much of what had structured the world of their parents and grandparents. The racial, sexual, and other injustices that had been accepted as self-evident by so many for so long were rejected along with many of the other ways their parents and grandparents had structured their world. This included masculine style. The sober dress descended from Brummell had served as the uniform of the establishment for over a century and a half. It reached its culmination in the 1950s when it was in the form called the Ivy League style, a clear indication of its place within and continuance of the old power structure (click here for an excellent introduction to the history of the Ivy Look). This had been the uniform of the British Empire with its widespread and exploitative colonization. This was the dress of the American establishment, its politicians and captains of business that had held on to slavery so long and that was still clinging to a world of inequality. The Suit, quite simply, was the uniform of The Man. In fact, a man perpetuating the old establishment in lifestyle and look could simply be called a Suit. When the Peacock Revolution was brought to America, in large part by pop musicians, it fed into this Cultural Revolution to produce the greatest convulsion in mens style since Brummell. Not only did men do everything they could to not look like their fathers, growing out their hair and shunning ties, they explored many other style traditions, often of peoples oppressed by the Anglo-American establishment like those of India and of the Native Americans.

At the same time, groups that had been marginalized and had always needed to conform to the AngloAmerican styles of the establishment started to develop ways of dressing that reflected a powerful embrace of their own identities. This collision of the Peacock Revolution and the Cultural Revolution produced an eclecticism in style that stayed as far away from the Ivy League suit as possible to make clear its rejection of the racist, sexist, homophobic, imperialist establishment while exploring every possible source of inspiration to express a vision of a new world. The number of serious youth with genuine cultural and political commitments was bolstered by many more young people simply attracted by the sex, drugs, and rock and roll the anarchic freedom of the movement, spreading its aesthetics into every corner of youth culture.

X. Men's Style After the Cultural Revolution The 1970s saw the commercialization of the style freedom of the 60s. All of the most excessive aspects of the 60s, the drugs, mistrust of guidance from tradition, and sartorial wandering in search of boundaries continued on in a new, intense narcissism, while the best of the 60s, the will for political change, lots its central position in popular culture. This is how one ends up at a place like Studio 54. Additionally, the veneration of the natural in the late 60s was overcome by an intense return to a space age enthusiasm that abandoned cotton, wool and cashmere for bulletproof synthetics. By the 1980s, the eclecticism initiated in the 60s cemented into standards of dress that were as determined by which subgroup a person chose to belong to as the standards of stratified dress were by the social classes under the ancien rgime. One now dressed as a punk, a jock, a stoner, a preppy, a goth, or as one of many other identities not necessarily tied to class. The prep look was very much in the tradition of the Anglo-American establishment, and it did indeed serve to reinforce the white, wealthy, exclusive connotation of this entire tradition in the 1980s' attempted reactionary reassertion of WASP dominance. However, unlike during the periods before the 1960s, there was no longer one authoritative masculine look, certainly not prep, which a man knew he was destined to wear as an adult. Many men continued to wear the uniform of the subgroup of their high school days, or a modified version of it, into adulthood. Preppies were just one of those many sub-cultures. Theirs was not the look of the majority as its predecessor, Ivy League Style, had been in the 1950s, and not at all the look of adult men in general. After the late-60s revolutions, many men became adults without ever having to put on a single tie. Most sons were no longer learning how to dress from their fathers at all, and those Baby Boomer fathers, still stylistically disoriented by the Cultural Revolution, did not know what to teach their sons about dress anyway. A long tradition of sons learning from their fathers rituals of dress that had been passed on for generations had been severed. The 1990s further dislodged traditional tailored menswear, typified by the suit and tie, as the dotcom boom brought a style determined as much by Bay Area casualness as by the young average age of its leaders. Eager to mimic the success of these new companies, many other businesses dropped their dress standards. Even more traditional professional spheres where the suit and tie had hung on began having Casual Fridays. By the end of the 90s it was really stuffy, if not entirely superfluous, to want to wear a tie, let alone a suit, to work in all but a very few professions. The tradition of tailored menswear since Brummell had all but disappeared by the end of a decade that counted Grunge as one of its major contributions to the history of style.

XI. The Style Opportunities and Risk You Now Face The 21st century has not developed new ways for men to dress with style and authority as much as it has inherited an ambivalence towards the old ones. The long, consistent trajectory from Brummell to JFK crashed in the late 60s. It has never fully recovered but neither has it fully disappeared. Eclecticism still divides men into countless subgroups, and all of the old anxieties about dressing well since the days of Brummell causing resentment among your peers by taking yourself (as they see it) too seriously, appearing inauthentic or untrustworthy, and calling your masculinity into question are all alive and quite well. In what we do usually choose to wear, we are still guided, it seems, by the English tendency towards comfort and sportswear, though this tendency has been forcefully dislodged from the tradition of the look Brummell established. This gives us men who wear team-related or other ad-covered t-shirts, ball caps and trainers at home and who feel quite dressed up wearing a polo shirt and chinos to work with trainers that, if he is feeling fancy, are black or brown. This is a natural point to have arrived at. For most American men, to dress up a little today means putting on the sportswear of half a century ago (chinos and a sports shirt - Business Casual). Dressing up even more puts you in the sportswear of a century ago (a sports coat and odd trousers - Smart Casual), or, if you are really going for it, the sportswear of a century and a half ago (a suit - Informal). That is, dressing up really just means turning back the clock to earlier forms of sports- and casualwear; the further the more formal. Even if you find yourself in White Tie, you are only wearing what men wore for riding two centuries ago. Formality, as I discuss here, is nothing more than conformity with what has been worn for a long time, with a look preserved in a specific form by tradition. Men have idealized looking sporty and comfortable for a couple of centuries now. The further back you go in that tradition, the more power your clothes connote and the greater the chance of stirring the anxiety of those most at home at the bottom of the scale of formality. Of course, there is nothing intrinsically or objectively better at all about a suit than shorts and a t-shirt. It simply has a longer lineage and more expensive materials and construction. And for the human animal, despite our protestations of egalitarianism, few things make a better impression than long lineages and expense. A suit, a tie, a sports coat, even a sweater or a sports shirt chosen and worn well communicate power because they show two things: 1) you have the means to buy clothing more expensive than a Super Bowl t-shirt, and 2) you haveknowledge of how these older and more traditional masculine styles should be worn. If you select and wear your clothes really well they also show that 3) you have talented skill and 4) the confidence to have a personal style. Demonstrating all of these things - earning power, knowledge, skill, and confidence - is what transforms style choices into your personal projection of power. Again, it is not that a suit is actually better than a t-shirt - there is no magical thread woven into it that gives you super powers - it is that wearing one well creates an impression of you for others that a t-shirt never could. People want to date, hire and be around others who earn well and have knowledge, skill, and confidence, unless they fear being judged by them, in which case resentment can turn them against the welldressed man. If you feel it is time to start dressing better but do not want negative social repercussions, the solution is simple: focus on dressing well at your peers' level of formality rather than alienating everybody bydressing more formally. Most men can improve their dress and how others view them quite a bit without alienating

their current peers, even if they live at the level of Business Casual. If you really want to dress more formally than your family, friends and coworkers, you need to move into social spheres and occupational opportunities, or at least regular occasions, where such formality is welcome. Your clothes should not put you at odds with others but make your interactions with them easier and more enjoyable.