BWW Reviews: Beyond the Hype with CONTEMPORARY MENSWEAR

In crafting their book, the editors of Contemporary Menswear (Thames & Hudson, 2014) have done everything possible to avoid everything easy and obvious about their topic. Fun exercise: flip through and see if you can find a single mention of Tom Ford, or Michael Kors, or Kanye West. I had no luck with these, but I did locate Nick Wooster (after a lot of trying) and Ralph Lauren (right in the introduction, but as an example of the kind of brand that the book won't be talking about). There are good reasons why the usual big names are so far removed. After all, it is the declared purpose of editors Steven Vogel, Nicholas Schonberger, and Calum Gordon to create a book that "sets out to cut through the PR gloss of so much fashion writing."

Profiles of more than fifty brands and designers, along with essays and interviews from important menswear personalities, have been brought together to accomplish just this. Throughout, clothes for casual use are the priority. The merchandise showcased in Contemporary Menswear tends towards the classic, the understandable, and the grown-up--some prestigious and paycheck-busting items to be sure, but no looks that are impossible to replicate on a budget or that will get you laughed off the street. There are (somewhat) known names such as Mark McNairy and Lightning Bolt, and there are storied brands such as Grenson, founded in 1866 and known for its "fantastically durable footwear." You can buy the book simply to relish Golden Bear's spin on the varsity jacket, or S.N.S. Herning's take on the marled turtleneck, or any of those Grenson shoes. Better, though, is to appreciate the wealth of context that the editors--without trending too academic--have brought to their choices.

This is where those essays and interviews come in. To explain the commercial past, present, and perhaps future of menswear, Jeff Carvalho and Jian DeLeon have offered up short pieces that sum up the menswear blogging industry. Some of what they say is common knowledge, but perhaps it is meant to have a time capsule quality; come what may, Contemporary Menswear will still be a valued entry in my personal library fifty years from now. More bracing are the selections from Minya Quirk, who stands up for individual taste over passing fads, and Nicholas Maggio, who eloquently and necessarily reminds us that "street style photographer" and "hipster with a camera" are not synonymous. The reality is more nuanced, and genuinely good street style footage is a mixture of meticulous planning and smart self-marketing. Gordon himself shoots down some of the lazier assumptions about men's fashion in his entry on Japanese menswear, a branch of the industry that is much admired but apparently the product of "an entirely different perspective."

These are points worth heeding, even though--beyond a certain point--the editors' interests are not my own. As explained in the introduction, Vogel and Co. have little interest in the "suit-wearing Patrick Bateman-esque aesthetic"--an omission that is at first stunning, then just unusual, considering how well the entire suiting industry has become both more mature and more democratic in the past ten years. (A menswear book that does this little with its topic's formal side is like a seafood restaurant that doesn't serve lobster.) But maybe my reaction is a sign that I am still figuring out--as we all are--a menswear scene that grows more and more vast by the day. Together, Vogel, Schonberger, and Gordon have laid claim to their own impressive corner of menswear's domain, purposefully and judiciously leaving plenty of territory for the rest of us.

Image courtesy of Thames & Hudson.

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