The Elegant Man - How To Construct The Ideal Wardrobe - Video Book Review - Men's Style
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Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be doing a book review on The Elegant Man.
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All right, let me jump right into it.
This is the book right here, The Elegant Man by Riccardo Villarosa and Giulano Angeli,
an amazing book.
I'm going to tell you right off, I give this five out of five stars, one of the best books,
a serious man who's building his wardrobe can own.
It's one of the lesser known books out there and in fact, I think it's mostly because of
the price.
It's funny, but any time a book is more than $20 on Amazon and more than $10 on Amazon,
people are very hesitant to buy it, which is a shame.
Now, the book, you're going to find the shape, it's a big book and it's not so much that
it's tall.
It's about a foot high, but it's very square.
It's around 14 inches wide and this is great.
I love this layout because the pictures and the images, they're top notch.
I'll put some of the pictures in the review in the article so you'll be able to see them
here, but yeah, it's got approximately 179 pages, excellent book.
It stacks up very well.
In fact, I would say on Sundays, I'll like it a lot better than anything Alan Flusser
has put out and it's right up there with what I consider to be one of the best books on
men's style.
In fact, it's I would say on the same level as "Gentleman" by Bernhard Roetzel.
Okay, so why haven't you heard about this?
It started off, from my understanding, in Italian.
It was translated over to English and it just didn’t have the same type of marketing that
we've seen some of the other books out there.
It came out approximately, I think, in earlier this decade, so it just kind of didn’t get
as much publicity, as much love.
I'm going to give it some love today.
So let me talk to you about the four reasons why I think this book is worth your time and
worth your investment.
1.
It's got real tailoring insight.
So the gentlemen that wrote this book, they really understand the craft.
They're Italians.
They go into this very, very detailed.
It's just beautifully written.
A lot of the pictures, they're English, but again, the writers are Italian and it's got
a very strong European view to it.
The attention to detail, again, is great.
If you've enjoyed the book "Gentleman", you're going to love this book as well.
2.
Wardrobe discussion - I love how they bring the whole wardrobe together and they talk
about not just as individual pieces, but they try to bring it together as a wardrobe, so
that's big.
A lot of books, they'll break things down too much and they won't bring them together.
This book doesn’t have that problem.
3.
Care and maintenance of clothing - I haven't seen another book out there that goes into
as much detail onto the care and maintenance of clothing.
"Gentleman" comes close, but this one takes it to a whole another level.
4.
The lat but not least and actually one of the best things about this book compared with
any other book I've seen out there is their discussion on fabrics.
They start off the entire book with this discussion, and I'll show it to you here really quick,
but they I would say probably -- I don't know, maybe 20% of the book is nothing more than
going into fabrics, and you can see right here.
They'll talk about cotton, so they give us a page on cottons.
They bring up two great pictures, one of them really up-close detail and they do this for
tons of fabrics out there.
You're not going to find a better description of fabrics in a layman's book.
I don't know if I'd say it's a layman's book, but unless you go out there and you study
textiles, you're not going to get better descriptions, and I think the descriptions here are even
better than some of the ones I've seen in textiles books.
So why would you be a bit hesitant to buy this?
It's not the price.
If you think paying $30 to $40 for some great information is -- well, I just can't help
you if you don't value information at that level in any case, so price is not the issue.
What is the issue is it's a very Eurocentric view and that makes sense, written by Italians.
But if you're in Midwest United States, you're down in Brazil, you're over perhaps in India,
you may find there's a bit of a disconnect with what they're talking about here and what's
available in your country and what you're going to work with.
So for many people, it's going to be this up in the clouds that you just can't get to
that level, but I still think there are so many great lessons you could apply.
The other one is going to be it's a bit dated.
A lot of the pictures, a lot of the images they use, most of them, they're just older
and I don't know if that was they couldn’t get a lot of more modern pictures, but you'll
look at some of this stuff and you'll wonder, "Okay, that was perhaps a good 50 years ago.
Is that good in the year 2012?"
Okay.
This has been Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style.
All I can tell you is that The Elegant Man is a great book.
I've already told you, five out of five stars, amazing.
I highly recommend it.
Go out there and get it.
Take care.