The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style Hardcover – May 23, 2006

I loved this book when I first read it in 2006, and I keep returning to it. It deals with a subject not exactly near and dear to everyone’s heart: men’s fine tailored clothing, comprising suits, shirts, and neckties; belts (bad) and suspenders (good); pocket handkerchiefs (VERY good!); shoes and socks; overcoats, tuxedos . . . everything a “suit” needs to know about the rules of classic attire to look his best. So it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Not only that, but the deliberately quirky, archaic style—an admiring parody of Machiavelli’s 16th-century "The Prince"—is something you either love or loathe. But if you’re into classic business dress and already know a little about it, and you appreciate witty, sophisticated, sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious prose, you’ll find "The Suit" a gem.The author knows whereof he writes. Although a hobbyist in this area, he’s an astonishingly dedicated one, the owner of, as he’s said elsewhere, “more suits than I care to admit,” all of them bespoke. (We’re talking big bucks here.) He knows his history and has pored over the Holy Grails of men’s classic attire ("Apparel Arts," anyone?). And he’s ready to tell you what to do and not to do if you’re going to suit up—not with gentle suggestions but stern pronouncements. Some of these make immediate sense (narrow trouser legs on a man of “superfluous girth” will “call attention to the great mass sitting atop them, making him look like Humpty Dumpty”); some are take-no-prisoners enunciations of generally accepted “rules” (notched lapels on a double-breasted jacket are “an abomination,” “you must eschew [breast-pocket] handkerchiefs that match your tie”); others seem pretty idiosyncratic (belts are “always uncomfortable”). Clearly some of his guidelines are to be taken with a large grain of salt. But he’s never less than entertaining, and sometimes, as in the key chapter “On the Difference between Formality and Dandification,” eye-openingly insightful.As other reviewers have noted, this is not the best suit-and-tie primer for those starting at zero, since aside from a few urbane cartoons, there are no photos or illustrations. But for those who have some grounding in the subject and want to expand their horizons, "The Suit" offers not only wide-ranging, expert knowledge but also considerable reading pleasure. Highly recommended.So much for my review of the book. For anyone who might be curious, however, let me say a few things about the author himself, since, as it turns out, he’s at least as interesting as the book he’s written. I acknowledge that this has no relevance whatsoever to the quality of "The Suit," so feel free to ignore what follows.“Nicholas Antongiavanni” is a pseudonym. The author’s real name is Michael Anton, and he works in the Trump administration as the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications. A lot has been written about him recently, much of it uncomplimentary. Mike Anton is a widely read, highly educated and credentialed, impressively articulate political philosopher of a particular conservative bent—a “West Coast Straussian,” to be exact—and an ardent supporter of Donald Trump and “Trumpism,” of which he is the best-known formulator. His main claim to fame or infamy, depending on your POV, is an essay he wrote in 2016 under a different pseudonym, “The Flight 93 Election.” (Anton was outed as the author in February 2017.) In it, he does his best to defend the idea that any rational conservative must vote for and support Trump. To paraphrase his 2016 thesis, although we don’t know exactly what a Trump presidency will look like [true perhaps at the time, a year later not so much], a Hillary presidency is 100 percent certain to destroy America. The American Republic is dying, and only Trump can save it.But it’s in an earlier and longer piece, “Toward a Sensible, Coherent Trumpism,” that Anton is at his most jaw-dropping. That’s where, in speaking about immigration, he tells us to give up the “ridiculous lie” we’ve been “force-fed” for the last 15 years about diversity: “’Diversity’ is not ‘our strength’; it’s a source of weakness, tension and disunion.” The Wall needs to be built and Third World immigration curtailed, because, well, we don’t want folks who aren’t People Like Us. The non-Trumpist “modern conservative,” an object of Anton’s withering scorn, “believes the leftist lie that his natural affinity for people who look, think and speak like himself is shameful and illegitimate, to be internally repressed and publicly denied.” Such people always take “the side of ‘the other’—the more alien and distant, the better—over and against their own people and country . . .” They are leading us to national ruin.I’d love to ask Mike exactly who he considers to be “his people,” the ones for whom he has that “natural affinity.” Apparently they need to “look, think and speak” as he does. But I wonder. If given the choice, would this urbane sophisticate rather hang with, say, Ted Nugent or Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Pat Robertson or Fareed Zakaria? Ralph Reed or Wynton Marsalis? I’m a white male and I know who in each pair I’D rather hang with. (Hint: It’s not the one who looks the most like me.) “My people” are the folks who share my interests and values, not my ethnicity or skin color. It’s hard to believe Anton doesn’t feel the same, despite what he’s written. But who knows.I wish I hadn’t learned as much about the author of "The Suit" as I have. I used to think it would be cool to meet him, share a bottle of an amazing Bordeaux, and shoot the breeze about clothes, wine, and French cooking. Now I’ve relegated him (not that he would care in the least) to my personal Basket of Semi-Adorables, Semi-Deplorables, along with the likes of Richard Wagner, the vicious anti-Semite whose great music can move me to tears, and John Derbyshire, the racist political writer whose book "Prime Obsession" is perhaps the best popular math book of the last century. It’s a truth I’ve seen demonstrated more than once: deplorable people sometimes create beautiful things.

A couple of months ago, the bespoke tailors of London's famed Savile Row, including directors of its most renowned and venerable firms, took to the street (most discreetly and properly, of course) to demonstrate against increases in rent and taxes that threaten this historic English institution. The rise in property-related costs is fueled in part by the desire of multinational fashion corporations to appropriate the prestige of this fabled address for their mass-produced, no-size-fits-any products. The Westminster City Council has responded with zoning plans and other recommendations to help the home of fine tailoring continue to flourish. Whether it can long withstand powerful institutions and market forces is another question.This feeling that the barbarians are at the gate would have been familiar to the author of The Prince. Spain was newly united and expansionist, France was meddling again, and the great Lorenzo de'Medici was dead. Florence warred with itself as power swung from royalists to republicans and back. Machiavelli feared for the state's survival. Personally, he cared less for whom he worked, and more that he merely be allowed to serve his city. The advice in his little treatise emphasized that the man of virtú - the strong and effective individual - could change the course of history.Nicholas Antongiavanni clearly sympathizes with this view. His delightful book stands with those who build (or want to build) a personal style based on good fit and one of several aesthetic traditions, rather than being at the mercy of corporate accountants, fickle designers, and depressing statistics about average body measurements. As other reviewers have noted, the book displays wit as well as the deeper pleasures of intelligent parody, including the pleasure of ideas in conversation across disciplines and centuries. The book is indeed a personal project, and that is its virtue. It is not generic.Antongiavanni has obviously read Flusser and Boyer, and knows both men. So why would he write a book like theirs? The Suit credits its readers with the sense to know that no single book makes an education in any field. Readers will benefit from testing Antongiavanni's propositions against Flusser's illustrations, and from considering the points where authors differ. Antongiavanni's opinions are strongly flavored and forcefully stated. In part this results from the demands of his parodic template, and no doubt in part from his own inclination. Again, this seems to me a feature rather than a flaw.The Suit is a refreshing addition to the discourse on men's dress. It has two important strengths: First, it is a book that can speak to men with more serious things to do than flip through picture books, and whose worldview is more complex than that of John T. Molloy. Second, it offers those very men, as well as those without experience, a reliable set of principles on which to build an effective personal style of dress. No garment or ensemble praised in this book will ever embarrass its wearer, assuming it is worn on the appropriate occasion. Many things proscribed in this book can, in fact, be both appropriate and stylish on the right man in the right circumstances. But here's a secret: the author knows this. When the reader understands himself, his culture, and the materials and techniques of clothing well enough, he can use the rules or break them--or make them himself. He will then embody the man of virtú.For those of us on the way, The Suit is entertaining and informative. Its rhetorical stance of infallible authority (and that of its Florentine model) is like the perfectly draped chest or exquisitely shaped shoulder of a well-cut jacket: a noble lie. Beneath is the human frame with its imperfections. But in the hands of a skilled tailor, both ideas and flesh are made to seem - more than in their naked state - truly themselves.

This is a fascinating book. Far different from the run-of-the-mill fashion guide, The Suit is a thoughtful, intelligent, witty, sometimes provocative look at clothes and the man. At one level, it gives the reader a very solid history of present clothing styles and conventions and sets some very clear standards for the well-dressed man..."rules" one should clearly understand even if one ultimately chooses to bend or break them. At a deeper level, the book is an exploration of clothes in contemporary society, of how others see us, and of how we see ourselves. In adopting the approach of Machiavelli's The Prince, Mr, Antongiavanni has taken some risk. I personally found the approach rather clever, but I suspect that the author intended it to be more than just an engaging literary device. It allows him to express his point of view in clear and unambiguous terms yet at the same time stimulate real thought as to his words and to the place of attire in today's world. It's not often one finds such literate and thought-provoking texts on the Style section shelf of your local bookstore.