In his book Eminently Suitable, G Bruce Boyer devotes a chapter to the question of how to dress for one’s figure. He opens by puncturing one of fashion’s more enduring illusions – that some men are naturally built better for clothes, as though style were something you can genetically inherit, like skin or hair colour.
“You hear it all the time,” Boyer wrote. “The idea that some men simply look better because their bodies wear clothes better… Even some men who work at keeping in shape, who exercise and watch their diet, have this fatalistic attitude. The truth is that anyone can look ridiculous; some men choose not to. Those who choose not to have learnt that many of the much-mouthed opinions about dress are lumbered with myth, misinformation and misguided prescriptions. Such men have learnt, in short, to dress themselves without relying on public opinion.”
