The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style [Hardcover]

Nicholas Antongiavanni (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 23, 2006

"Clothes make the man."

Mark Twain never worked in today's fast-paced workplace, but his observation has never been keener: clothes do make the man. With The Suit, Nicholas Antongiavanni provides a masterly manual on what it takes to succeed: advice on how to dress with style, flair, and an eye toward gaining power. That's because "business casual" has proved itself a one-way ticket to a lifetime in the corporate dungeon. But if you apply the sartorial advice proffered in The Suit to your clothes, you will project elegance, bravado, and success.

Drawing inspiration from Machiavelli's The Prince, Antongiavanni has crafted an essential handbook for the ambitious man who recognizes that smart and stylish appearance is a lever to power. From neckties to footwear, belts to suspenders, lapels to handkerchiefs, The Suit leaves no garment or accessory untouched and will inject a dose of good taste into your closet. The debates over double-breasted vs. single, two-buttons vs. three, English vs. Italian, and many others are settled with wit by Antongiavanni's wealth of knowledge in the art of dress.

The Suit is much more than a simple how-to manual -- Antongiavanni packs these pages with insightful and sometimes stinging commentary on celebrities and the clothes they wear. Leading public figures from David Letterman to Donald Rumsfeld are picked apart at the seams. Antongiavanni uses powerful men in the public eye as entertaining examples of how to dress properly and what garish mistakes to avoid. Whether you are already a corporate Prince -- or if you are a Joe Cubicle aspiring to be something greater -- The Suit will teach you how to make your clothes work for you. No matter what your physical build or your status in the workplace, let Nicholas Antongiavanni be your fashion consultant.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Nicholas Antongiavanni is the nom de plum for a former speechwriter to President George W. Bush, New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. The author currently works for a powerful media mogul and lives in Westchester County, New York, with his wife and small child. A leading expert on men's tailoring, he owns more suits than he would care to admit.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness; annotated edition edition (May 23, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060891866
• ISBN-13: 978-0060891862
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.9 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > Business & Investing > Business Life > Etiquette
  • #42 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Business & Professional
  • #46 in Books > Arts & Photography > Decorative Arts & Design > Textile & Costume

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 111 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Tailoring's noble lies May 30, 2006

By Randall Couch

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

A couple of months ago, the bespoke tailors of London's famed Savile Row, including directors of its most renowned and venerable firms, took to the street (most discreetly and properly, of course) to demonstrate against increases in rent and taxes that threaten this historic English institution. The rise in property-related costs is fueled in part by the desire of multinational fashion corporations to appropriate the prestige of this fabled address for their mass-produced, no-size-fits-any products. The Westminster City Council has responded with zoning plans and other recommendations to help the home of fine tailoring continue to flourish. Whether it can long withstand powerful institutions and market forces is another question.

This feeling that the barbarians are at the gate would have been familiar to the author of The Prince. Spain was newly united and expansionist, France was meddling again, and the great Lorenzo de'Medici was dead. Florence warred with itself as power swung from royalists to republicans and back. Machiavelli feared for the state's survival. Personally, he cared less for whom he worked, and more that he merely be allowed to serve his city. The advice in his little treatise emphasized that the man of virtú - the strong and effective individual - could change the course of history.

Nicholas Antongiavanni clearly sympathizes with this view. His delightful book stands with those who build (or want to build) a personal style based on good fit and one of several aesthetic traditions, rather than being at the mercy of corporate accountants, fickle designers, and depressing statistics about average body measurements. As other reviewers have noted, the book displays wit as well as the deeper pleasures of intelligent parody, including the pleasure of ideas in conversation across disciplines and centuries. The book is indeed a personal project, and that is its virtue. It is not generic.

Antongiavanni has obviously read Flusser and Boyer, and knows both men. So why would he write a book like theirs? The Suit credits its readers with the sense to know that no single book makes an education in any field. Readers will benefit from testing Antongiavanni's propositions against Flusser's illustrations, and from considering the points where authors differ. Antongiavanni's opinions are strongly flavored and forcefully stated. In part this results from the demands of his parodic template, and no doubt in part from his own inclination. Again, this seems to me a feature rather than a flaw.

The Suit is a refreshing addition to the discourse on men's dress. It has two important strengths: First, it is a book that can speak to men with more serious things to do than flip through picture books, and whose worldview is more complex than that of John T. Molloy. Second, it offers those very men, as well as those without experience, a reliable set of principles on which to build an effective personal style of dress. No garment or ensemble praised in this book will ever embarrass its wearer, assuming it is worn on the appropriate occasion. Many things proscribed in this book can, in fact, be both appropriate and stylish on the right man in the right circumstances. But here's a secret: the author knows this. When the reader understands himself, his culture, and the materials and techniques of clothing well enough, he can use the rules or break them--or make them himself. He will then embody the man of virtú.

For those of us on the way, The Suit is entertaining and informative. Its rhetorical stance of infallible authority (and that of its Florentine model) is like the perfectly draped chest or exquisitely shaped shoulder of a well-cut jacket: a noble lie. Beneath is the human frame with its imperfections. But in the hands of a skilled tailor, both ideas and flesh are made to seem - more than in their naked state - truly themselves.

46 of 54 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful, Useful, and Hilarious June 1, 2006

By J. A. Kessler

Format:Hardcover

I am not a man, and I don't play one on T.V. but I could not put this book down. It is a great read even if you are not familiar with Machiavelli's Prince but, if you are, it is a pleasure of the highest order. My husband is not in any way familiar with Machiavelli (except through common ethnicity) but he found the advice most helpful on a recent shopping excusion. Antongiavanni presents a beaux ideal of what a well-dressed man should look like (taking into account as many particulars as can be examined--even down to deformities) and leaves the application of those rules up to the virtue of the reader. His rules are demanding but virtue is not an easy thing and no good thing is acquired without it. If you cannot accept all his rules or accomodate your virtue to every particular, you will still be a better dressed man for the effort. As a matter of social commentary, most readers will appreciate Antongiavanni's discussion of the difference between style and fashion--the former being the thing to emulate the latter being the thing to eschew. Read it and buy one for a friend. You will have given him (or even her) a better gift than gold.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A refreshing change of pace June 9, 2006

By C. Franke

Format:Hardcover

Extremely clever and quite enjoyable... really a refreshing change of pace for those of us who like to read about Men's fashion.

Antongiavanni's dry wit might not be fully appreciated by those who are not devotees to the work of Machiavelli but the parody is hilarious to the well read gent with a grasp of matters sartorial.

How refreshing to see a book on mens clothing not targeted to the recent grad on his first interview!

Great read, well thought out and quite entertaining. Antongiavanni pulls off a neat trick by making the book entertaining and useful for those who HAVEN'T read Machiavelli while leaving those who have to marvel at his ability to parody such divergent topics. Well done!