BWW Reviews: Menswear at Its Most Comprehensive in THE FASHION RESOURCE BOOK: MEN

If you are looking for a crisp survey of Anglo-American menswear, then by all means add The Fashion Resource Book: Men to your bookshelf. This probably won't be your go-to volume if you're writing a dissertation on men's fashion; think of it more as a conscientious intro course in the topic--and then some. Authored by Robert Leach and decked out with 393 illustrations, the book ranges widely but coheres nicely. Some of the thanks can go to Leach's lucid, precise, frills-free style. Perhaps more of the thanks can go to the judicious structure that Leach has chosen--a structure that allows him to discuss every meaningful menswear name that (unless you're one of those dissertation writers) you can probably rattle off, but that leaves more to explore and more to see once you've made it past illustration 393.

This Fashion Resource Book is divided into three major sections: "The Research Process", "Research and Inspiration", and "Garment Biographies". Despite the clear differences in emphasis and format, all three segments testify to Leach's vision of menswear as purpose-oriented and limit-conscious: as he explains right in the introduction, modern men's fashion "is not about huge concepts and avant-garde silhouettes: as a discipline, menswear is much more rooted in reality--in product, if you like." "The Research Process" explains how revered designers such as Ralph Lauren and Alexander McQueen realized their visions. "Research and Inspiration" shows how military uniforms, workwear, sportswear, street style, and even some of those "huge concepts" have influenced the course of menswear history. And "Garment Biographies" trains its sights on seminal menswear items--the trench coat, the motorcycle jacket, the field jacket--that continue to be reimagined and reinvented by menswear designers today, and that probably will be reinvented yet again in days to come.

You can quarrel with some of Leach's tactics: probably not enough emphasis on suiting and certainly not technicality to teach an expert designer anything new. But menswear is not simply an aggregate of accepted inspirations and styles; it is something that activates both popular culture and collective imagination. This book excels (without too much obvious effort) in showing how men's fashion permeates Western culture and entertainment. The entries on the Duke of Windsor, Thom Browne, and Junya Watanabe are virtuosic in their density, establishing in a few paragraphs both the specific styles that these figures perpetuated and the indelible roles that these figures have assumed in menswear mythology.

And the images are equally suggestive and economical. If you don't have any reason to buy a white three-piece suit or a dark-cobalt field jacket, take a look at the shots of Buster Keaton wearing the former and a Belstaff runway model wearing the latter--and suddenly you'll have a reason. Truth be told, I wasn't expecting anything less than a handsomely-illustrated volume from Thames & Hudson; along with this Fashion Resource Book, the publishing house's menswear list includes the taut Contemporary Menswear and the stately The Perfect Gentleman: The Pursuit of Timeless Elegance and Style in London. In terms of discussion, The Fashion Resource Book: Men stretches out more than either of those, but its illustrations condense so much of what makes menswear desirable.

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