When Men Knew How to Accessorize

I no longer have any excuse for a lack of interest in men's fashion! Some of the most exciting recent scholarship on clothing and culture proves that in the past, men have had most of the fun sartorially speaking. “A Rakish History of Men's Wear,” the small but worthwhile exhibit at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street illustrates this point exactly. Curator Paula A. Baxter has drawn from the library's prodigious collection of historical costume and fashion plates to show that from antiquity to the modern era men have led fashion with clothing that “was more innovative, suggestive, and less conservative” than their feminine counterparts. It was not until the nineteenth century that this masculine preference for decoration and display gave way to a more sober uniform, namely the tailored men's suit. Baxter suggests multiple reasons for this new restraint including puritanical prohibitions against ornamentation, the dissolution of the aristocratic class, and the rise of the English dandy. This diminutive exhibit, however, merely scratches the surface.