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The study of men’s fashion has evolved from an emerging subject to a dynamic and growing field, intersecting with critical conversations on gender, race, sexuality, disability, colonialism, and globalization.
The Handbook of Men’s Fashion pushes beyond conventional narratives by centering three guiding approaches: decentralizing and decolonizing men’s fashion studies, global viewpoints, and intersectionality. With 34 chapters from fashion and dress scholars, the collection offers a uniquely progressive perspective on the field’s development.
Divided into six sections—Theoretical Perspectives, People and Bodies, Places, Objects and Products, Promotions and Business, and Popular Culture—the book examines how masculinity is fashioned, contested, and expressed across time and space. Topics range from national dress and subcultural style to queer and disabled masculinities, luxury branding, and digital fashion communities. By centering histories and communities that have been marginalized in previous scholarship, the chapters collectively expand the boundaries of men’s fashion studies.
Rather than providing a definitive account, The Handbook of Men’s Fashion serves as an invitation to rethink the field, interrogate absences, and imagine new possibilities. It is an essential resource for scholars, students, and industry professionals invested in the past, present, and future of men’s fashion.
The main audience for this book is academic, but it will also appeal to fashion practitioners, curators, and cultural critics, and to general readers interested in the history, culture, and meaning of men’s fashion and dress.
'This is not just a book about men’s fashion—it is a bold exploration of how men use fashion to shape and perform their masculinities. Bringing together leading voices in the field, this volume maps new directions for men’s fashion research and reveals how masculinities are dressed, expressed, and represented across cultures.
From theory to lived experience, the contributors take us on a global journey, showing how men’s bodies, styles, and self-expressions challenge the industry and expand our understanding of fashion’s power. With sharp insight into identity, culture, and representation, this book illuminates the crucial role fashion plays in constructing contemporary masculinities.
Essential reading for anyone interested in fashion studies, this volume establishes the foundations of a critical field devoted to men’s fashion—one that recognizes difference, embraces intersectionality, and insists on the global dimensions of masculinity today.'
Introduction: Expanding Men’s Fashion Studies: Intersectionality, Decoloniality and Global Masculinities
Ben Barry, Andrew Reilly and José Blanco F.
Section 1: Theoretical Perspectives
1. Negotiating Masculine Gender with Dress: Moving Beyond the Binary
Andrew Reilly and Jenifer K. McGuire
2. Little Boy Blue
Jo Barraclough Paoletti
3. Globalized Masculinities in Latin American National Costumes
José Blanco F. and Raúl J Vázquez-López
4. Redressing Rituals: Writing South African Men’s Fashion as Site of Decolonial Praxis
Lesiba Mabitsela and Erica de Greef
5. Blurring the Binary: Masculinity in Drag Performers’ Costumes
Olivia Baker and Julie Hillery
6. From Schnorrer to Parvenu: Jews, Tailoring and the Performance of Respectability
Jonathan C. Kaplan-Wajselbaum
Section 2: People and Bodies
7. Genderless Sizing
Lynn Boorady
8. Circumference to Size: Tailoring the Fat Man, 1820–1920
Lauren Downing Peters and Chloe Chapin
9. Dress for the Body You Have: Revealing the Infallible Realness of Men’s Bodies through Queer Eye
Ashley Morgan
10. ‘You Just Go With It—You Slowly Move With It’: Social Performance of Older Male Bodies through Fashion and Clothing
Ania Sadkowska
11. The Subversive Style of André Leon Talley
Jason Cyrus
Section 3: Places
12. Fashion and the Devil’s Railroad: Masculinities, Migration and Modernities in the Brazilian Amazon
Elizabeth Kutesko
13. Border Crossing: Contemporary Russian Fashion Photography and the Queering of Men’s Style
Graham H. Roberts
14. A Fashion Investigation of the Silent Chinese Hipsters
Leren Li
15. Haute Headhunter: The Development of a New Traditional Dress for Indigenous Men in North Borneo
Daniel James Cole
16. “Styling Gay Men in the West”
Shaun Cole
Section 4: Objects and Products
17. Masculinities and Men’s Accessories in Turkey: Differentiations and Intersections of Religion and Political Ideologies
Nazli Alimen
18. Fresh Out the Box: Sneakers and Shifting Masculinities
Elizabeth Semmelhack
19. Conspicuous Waist: Making and Modifying the Eighteenth-Century Men’s Waistcoat
Peter McNeil
20. Bottom Up: The Jockstrap as Contradictory Signifier of Male Potency and Vulnerability
Änne Söll and Christian Wandhoff
21. Trousers, Pants, and Hose
Jay McCauley Bowstead
22. The Scottish Kilt
David Loranger
23. The Shirt that Says ‘Aloha’
Marcia A. Morgado
Section 5: Promotions and Business
24. Queer Crip Masculinities: Embodied Dressing/Making and Reimagining of Disabled Masculinities
Ben Barry and Philippa Nesbitt
25. African Menswear Design: Fashion-scapes and Dress Innovations
Victoria L. Rovine
26. Encoding Cultural Meaning: Gendered Performativity in Fragrance Space
Miranda Gordon
27. Suit Up: Branding White-collar Masculinity
Myles Ethan Lascity
28. Body Doubles: Men’s Tailoring and the Origins of the Fashion Mannequin
Alison Mathews David
Section 6: Section Art, Media, & Popular Culture
29. Dress, Style, and Masculinities in American Cinema
Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas
30. Emerging Binaries and Queering Bodies
Hannah Liebreich and Sadie Lynch
31. Hybrid Dandyism and the Construction of Masculinity in Modern Korea: Ko Hui-dong (1885–1965) and Lee Quede (1913–1965)
Kyunghee Pyun
32. Men’s Street Style at Fashion Week as Photographic and Representational Practice
Rebecca Halliday
33. Online Menswear Communities
Nathaniel Weiner
34. Men’s Dress in Popular Romance Novels
Jonathan Allan
Notes on Contributors