Losing Control
The Nineteenth-Century Beard Movement in Europe and North America
Viewed from a distance of more than a century, the nineteenth-century beard fashion looks like a basic historical fact. And...
On Masculinities
A Love Letter to My Father
When he was out running errands or working in his study, bent over a book or teaching the students who...
Beggars And Choosers
Carlo is concerned about his looks; it’s important to him how his ‘outer shell’ – his coat – appears. Decent...
A Conversation With Rick Owens
Fashion is popular because it’s a mystery. It’s the ebb and flow of the subtle things we propose as designers,...
The Suit
I began injecting testosterone at thirty. When I slipped on the jacket in front of the mall mirror at thirty-two,...
A Conversation With Kenneth Goldsmith
Poets hate the fact that I have a persona because poets aren’t supposed to have one. You’re supposed to be...
From Style Icon to Fashion Victim
Masculinity and Spectacle in the James Bond franchise
In a new millennium, Bond is faced with many difficult tasks; these have included parachuting into the London Olympics beside...
To Cap It All
In 1977 I bought my first flat cloth cap – in navy cotton twill with leather detailing on each of...
Putting On a Zoot Suit
The zoot suit was an icon of its time, born from the bespoke draped silhouettes of London’s Savile Row in...
Self-Fashioning as Resistance
The wakashu, traditionally played by teenage boys, represented a specific subculture within Edo Japan. Wakashu are described by kabuki scholar...
Trousers & The Most Precious Ornament
A man in his own clothes is as much sexless as possible. He shaves his face so that, if he...