From Beau Brummell A$AP Rocky, “The Mens Fashion Book” The Best Compilation in the History of Men’s Fashion

Available next month, Men’s Fashion Book (Phaidon) looks to the past of men’s fashion and envisions its future, a period when the industry took an unexplored path. Some of the upheaval has to do with new conceptions of masculinity, others with the reconfiguration of the workspace, and still others with the advent of the Internet and social networks, which offer information and choices to audiences that have never been so engaged.

Men’s fashion and its evolution

Jacob Gallagher, fashion journalist at Wall Street Journal, wrote the introduction and most of the book’s 500 entries, which initially had 800, he explained over the phone. There were those who were left out, the author confessed before adding that he wanted to know the reactions of those who would discover the large volume.

The book’s alphabetical order triggers unexpected connections between the old and the new, and in fact mimics the kind of juxtaposition and surprising combination specific to digital: pages devoted to Grandma Brings a Trip, a popular brand from the Swinging Sixties, faces Cary Grant, a paroxysm of traditional male elegance, while Virgil Abloh share double page with Haider Ackermann. There are teenagers and twenties who are very knowledgeable about what Helmut Lang Where Martin Margiela in the 90s, show Jacob Gallagher. I think it’s really easy for them to find out which team they’re in, so to speak, or identify what interests them online, and then that sparks their personal style.

Jacob Gallagher tell us about the history of costumes, Beau Brummell and archives of today’s men’s fashion experience.

Mode: How would you explain the growing interest in men’s fashion? What changes have occurred to trigger this new momentum?

Jacob Gallagher: [Regardez] how men spend their money in the past: they mainly buy suits, ties, formal wear. So now they are clearly spending less money and less interest in this kind of purchase. They are much freer, more in control of their choices when it comes to clothing. Many of them decided not to act like sheep anymore and stopped wearing the same clothes all the time.

How did the creators respond?