Men’s fashion inspires some stylish stocking fillers

From Paul Newman to Roger Moore and even Geoffrey Rush, some men are masters of sartorial statement.

Paul Newman makes a preppy pullover look cool on the cover of The Details: Iconic Men’s Accessories.

As there are only six weeks until Christmas, I will try between now and then to mention some books that may make good stocking fillers.

You know the sort I mean: books unlikely to receive a full review but that offer a bit of festive fun. First up is one I turned to as a balm after travelling to Bali recently for the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. No, it’s not what you think, as I have an iron constitution. It’s The Details: Iconic Men’s Accessories, by English writer Josh Sims (Laurence King Publishing, 176pp, $45). What’s the connection with Bali? Well, if there is a sorrier statement of our nation’s sartorial standing than the check-in queue at Denpasar airport, I have yet to see it.

“It is the little things in one’s sartorial presentation that make all the difference,’’ Sims counsels. Indeed. Little things like shoes. Speaking of which, Paul Newman sports plimsolls on Sims’s cover. He also makes a preppy pullover look cool, no mean feat. No feet at all, in fact, as everyone in the first two chapters, devoted to boots and shoes, is properly shod, though Jean-Paul Belmondo does flash some ankle above a dangling slipper.

The following chapters, illustrated with photographs of famous sorts and accompanied by chatty text, cover headwear, underwear, watches and jewellery, bags, grooming (including tattoos), accessories (ties, gloves and so on) and tools (fountain pens, etc). Australia gets a guernsey via Speedos and Geoffrey Rush in The Tailor of Panama. My favourites include a young Peter O’Toole in a pair of Derbys, Newman (yes, again) showing how to wear a cowboy hat, a pre-Bond Roger Moore in a pomade ad and Steve McQueen pulling on the gloves for The Thomas Crown Affair. It’s also hard not to mention Tom Jones’s black cossie.

More serious but still valuable is True Style: The History and Principles of Classic Menswear, by American fashion expert G. Bruce Boyer (Basic Books, 251pp, $34.99). In knowledgeable yet jovial style, Boyer guides us through tricky terrain in chapters such as Bow Ties, Denim, Dressing Gowns, Shorts, Turtlenecks. I keenly read Mixing Patterns for signs of civilisational slippage. Should one wear anything but a solid shirt with a patterned suit? Of course not, unless one is Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal from the TV show of the same name, and he eats people. Boyer senses just how high are the stakes: “… mixing patterns can be a minefield of potential disaster’’. But the most engrossing chapter is The Shoe-Hosiery-Trouser Nexus, which includes an overdue discussion of socklessness, a matter on which the genial Boyer is far too tolerant.

Quote of the week: Reviewing Michel Houellebecq’s new novel, Submission, for The New York Times, Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard opened with a confession: he had never read the French provocateur. Nor, he mentioned, had he watched the films of Danish director Lars von Trier. His reasons are a little mind-bending, as is the rest of his review, which you should be able to find online.

“What prevents me from reading Houellebecq and watching von Trier is a kind of envy — not that I begrudge them success, but by reading the books and watching the films I would be reminded of how excellent a work of art can be, and of how far beneath that level my own work is. Such a reminder, which can be crushing, is something I shield myself from by ignoring Houellebecq’s books and von Trier’s films. That may sound strange, and yet it can hardly be unusual. If you’re a carpenter, for instance, and you keep hearing about the amazing work of another carpenter, you’re not necessarily going to seek it out, because what would be the good of having it confirmed that there is a level of excellence to which you may never aspire? Better to close your eyes and carry on with your own work, pretending the master carpenter doesn’t exist.’’