A new book celebrates A.P.C.’s timeless style.

Where does the modern man go for unfussy, yet stylish clothes that he knows he can wear with ease? This is a timeless conundrum that we’ve all faced at some point, but that, in the late 1980s, particularly rankled Mr Jean Touitou, the founder of A.P.C. (Atelier de Production et de Création). His solution? To design his own clothes, naturally. “It was such a drama for me to get a normal pair of jeans and a nicely proportioned sweater that I decided I had to do it myself,” he writes in a new book, A.P.C. Transmission, which, released in honour of the brand’s 30th anniversary, distils its particularly Parisian take on casual, everyday style into a pleasingly (and appropriately) substantial 544 pages.

The tome is neatly divided into three parts, the first a thrown-together scrapbook, featuring scribbled letters, old newspaper articles, and worn photographs of the French-Tunisian Mr Touitou in his youth. The second part of the book contains transcripts from speeches Mr Touitou has made, and there are some biographical gems here, for instance, Mr Touitou looking back on what he calls his “communist years” (he was a member of a Trotskyist organisation in his early twenties), and explaining how the revolutionary spirit he encountered then influenced the aesthetics he later brought to his designs.

The book’s final part is a “systematic catalogue of almost everything that has been done, year after year, by A.P.C.”, and is by far the largest section, documenting the brand’s many collections, campaigns, and storefronts, from its conception in 1987 up to the present day. Highlights include images from A.P.C.’s 2013 collaboration with Mr Kanye West (captioned by Mr Touitou with “Funny thing is, when I first met Kanye West, I didn’t know who he was”), and some charming campaign photography shot by Mr Bruno Staub and styled by Ms Camille Bidault-Waddington, two of Mr Touitou’s longtime collaborators.

What began 30 years ago as a quiet rebellion against the florid fashion of the 1980s has today become an essential staple in the wardrobe of clean contemporary menswear. Still, even quiet clothes sometimes need a voice, hence the hefty book. And as Mr Touitou wrote in a 2013 speech featured inside, “Our clothes are so not obviously story-telling clothes. They need to be talked about.” This seems a good opportunity to do so.

Keep up to date with The Daily by signing up to our weekly email roundup. Click here to update your email preferences