A group of friends try to make sense of love and life in the new millennium in this hilarious novel from Van Whitfield, author of Something’s Wrong with Your Scale! and Beeperless Remote. After years of disappointment, Simon Washington has grown tired of the Washington, DC, dating scene. He’s desperately looking for a wife when he runs into his first love and determines to regain her affections. Meanwhile, Simon’s best friend Stuart Worthington is doing his best not to settle down when he also rekindles a relationship with an ex-girlfriend. As it happens, both friends are in immediate need of dates for their annual New Year’s vacation. With the clock ticking and their tickets waiting, Stuart and Simon lay plans to convince these old flames to accompany them, only to have a shocking revelation threaten everything at the last minute. With its page-turning plot and hilarious insights, Guys in Suits is a delightful novel that shines a spotlight on the imperfections of men, the enigmas of women, and the perils they both face in the quest to find someone right.
A “masterful . . . brilliantly constructed novel” of love and chaos in 1950s Vietnam (Zadie Smith, The Guardian). It’s 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it’s not just a political tangle that’s kept him tethered to the country. There’s also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor colonialism is what’s best for Southeast Asia, but rather a “Third Force”: American democracy by any means necessary. His ideas of conquest include Phuong, to whom he promises a sweet life in the states. But as Pyle’s blind moral conviction wreaks havoc upon innocent lives, it’s ultimately his romantic compulsions that will play a role in his own undoing. Although criticized upon publication as anti-American, Graham Greene’s “complex but compelling story of intrigue and counter-intrigue” would, in a few short years, prove prescient in its own condemnation of American interventionism (The New York Times).
Men’s Style is a personal and knowledgeable compendium of tasteful advice for the thinking man on how to dress and shop for clothes in a world of conflicting fashion imperatives. This sophisticated and witty book by the popular Globe and Mail columnist combines nuggets of history and the sociology of masculine attire with a practical and supremely useful guide to achieving an elegant and affordable wardrobe for work and play. In chapters and amusing sidebars on shoes, suits, shirts and ties, formal and casual wear, underwear and swimsuits, cufflinks and watches, coats, hats, and scarves, Russell Smith steers a confident course between the hazards of blandness and vulgarity to articulate a philosophy of dress that can take you anywhere. He tells you what the rules are for looking the part at the office, a formal function, or the hippest party, and when you can toss those rules aside. Men’s Style is supplemented throughout with fifty black-and-white illustrations and diagrams by illustrator Edwin Fotheringham.
Clothes maketh the man--discover the fascinating history and evolution of the modern suit from the late 17th century to date. "A fascinating, richly illustrated history of suits." -- Esquire magazine "Few coffee-table books are so beautifully illustrated or as researched." -- GQ magazine For millions of men across the world the common denominator that identifies them is the suit. From eighteenth-century bespoke to the mass industrialization of the 20th-century, we see how the uniform of the ruling classes became the utilitarian outfit of the worker. A series of thematic chapters illustrates how the universal staple of a man's wardrobe can play many different roles and, chameleon-like, can mean different things in different situations. From the Duke of Windsor to The Thin White Duke, David Bowie, from James Brown to "The Godfather," movie stars, rock stars, heroes and villains, philanthropists, presidents, and gangsters have dressed to impress in a matching jacket and trousers, and have found that a suit will suit them very well.
Since the dawn of western fashion in the Middle Ages, women's dress has never stopped evolving, yet menswear has seen far fewer style revolutions. At the centre of the male wardrobe is the suit: relatively unchanged since the 17th century, its cut and cloth suggest athleticism, seriousness, sexuality and strength – qualities which contrasted with the perceived superficiality and frivolity of female dress, and eventually led to the adoption of the suit into the female wardrobe where it remains to this day. In Sex and Suits brilliant essayist and art critic Anne Hollander charts the development of men's and women's fashion from their divergence in the medieval period to their convergence through to the late 20th century. Challenging the idea that the suit's success is merely down to its practicality, this trailblazing book argues that men have been fashion's true style-setters and that as women's fashion has taken on elements of men's style through tailoring, so men have reclaimed the embellishment and colour of past eras. First published in 1994 to great acclaim, this classic text is as fresh and provocative as ever and remains a must-read for students, scholars and anyone fascinated by the history of fashion and gender.
Since its first publication, Classic Tailoring Techniques for Menswear has been the authoritative resource for custom hand tailoring production. Providing in-depth, step-by-step instructions for the processes required by bespoke and couture-level manufacturing, this book retains its value and relevance for young and established tailors alike. Continuing this great tradition, the third edition introduces new discussions of traditional tailoring processes in the industry and highlights the value of hand-crafted construction in the context of environmentally-sustainable design. New to this Edition: - Learning Objectives let you know what you'll learn in each chapter - New Tricks of the Trade feature offers helpful tips - End of chapter discussion questions help you test your knowledge of the chapter concepts - A new, extended Glossary and Key Terms throughout emphasize a renewed focus on essential vocabulary STUDIO Features Include: - Download additional student exercises to practice newly learned skills - Review concepts with flashcards of essential vocabulary Instructor Resources Include: - The Instructor's Guide provides suggestions for planning the course and using the text in the classroom - PowerPoint® presentations include images from the book and provide a framework for lecture and discussion
Dressing the Man is the definitive guide to what men need to know in order to dress well and look stylish without becoming fashion victims. Alan Flusser's name is synonymous with taste and style. With his new book, he combines his encyclopedic knowledge of men's clothes with his signature wit and elegance to address the fundamental paradox of modern men's fashion: Why, after men today have spent more money on clothes than in any other period of history, are there fewer well-dressed men than at any time ever before? According to Flusser, dressing well is not all that difficult, the real challenge lies in being able to acquire the right personalized instruction. Dressing well pivots on two pillars -- proportion and color. Flusser believes that "Permanent Fashionability," both his promise and goal for the reader, starts by being accountable to a personal set of physical trademarks and not to any kind of random, seasonally served-up collection of fashion flashes. Unlike fashion, which is obliged to change each season, the face's shape, the neck's height, the shoulder's width, the arm's length, the torso's structure, and the foot's size remain fairly constant over time. Once a man learns how to adapt the fundamentals of permanent fashion to his physique and complexion, he's halfway home. Taking the reader through each major clothing classification step-by-step, this user-friendly guide helps you apply your own specifics to a series of dressing options, from business casual and formalwear to pattern-on-pattern coordination, or how to choose the most flattering clothing silhouette for your body type and shirt collar for your face. A man's physical traits represent his individual road map, and the quickest route toward forging an enduring style of dress is through exposure to the legendary practitioners of this rare masculine art. Flusser has assembled the largest andmost diverse collection of stylishly mantled men ever found in one book. Many never-before-seen vintage photographs from the era of Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, and Fred Astaire are employed to help illustrate the range and diversity of authentic men's fashion. Dressing the Man's sheer magnitude of options will enable the reader to expand both the grammar and verbiage of his permanent-fashion vocabulary. For those men hoping to find sartorial fulfillment somewhere down the road, tethering their journey to the mind-set of permanent fashion will deliver them earlier rather than later in life.
New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin takes readers to a whole new level with his darkly comic sci-fi thriller, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits. An Alex Award Winner Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements. An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move. Mysterious, smooth-talking power players who lurk behind the scenes. A young woman from the trailer park. And her very smelly cat. Together, they will decide the future of mankind. Get ready for a world in which anyone can have the powers of a god or the fame of a pop star, in which human achievement soars to new heights while its depravity plunges to the blackest depths. A world in which at least one cat smells like a seafood shop's dumpster on a hot summer day. This is the world in which Zoey Ashe finds herself, navigating a futuristic city in which one can find elements of the fantastic, nightmarish and ridiculous on any street corner. Her only trusted advisor is the aforementioned cat, but even in the future, cats cannot give advice. At least not any that you'd want to follow. Will Zoey figure it all out in time? Or maybe the better question is, will you? After all, the future is coming sooner than you think.
YOU ONLY GET SEVEN SECONDS TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION - ARE YOU MAKNG YOURS COUNT? A good suit is essential part of every wardrobe, yet so many men still don't know how to shop for, alter and style their suits. In The Suit Book, Clare Sheng decodes the process of buying and wearing a suit. Her advice is also a reminder that dressing well is an integral part of the road to success. Using real examples and illustrations, Clare outlines what to look for in a suit and reveals why even the most expensive garments will look cheap if they aren't fitted properly. These easy-to-follow tips will show you how to dress better and feel confident with the way you look. If you want to take your style to the next level, this book is a must-read. You will never again feel like an imposter in your suit or the menswear department.
