THE EXECUTIVE LOOK: How To Get It, How To Keep It

by Mortimer Levitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1981

The proprietor of The Custom Shop Shirtmakers--""44 stores coast-to-coast""--explains, flashily, how to be discreetly well assembled. ""Wear two plains, but only one fancy"" (usually, a plain suit and a patterned shirt or tie). ""Wear a base color""--your suit--""with an accent color."" Wear a dark suit with a light shirt and tie, or vice versa. And--top priority for Levitt--fit your shirt collar ""to four dimensions, instead of the usual two""; i.e., collar back-height and front-height, not just collar size and style. The book is fitted out with photos of celebrities projecting the wrong image (Henry Ford II as a ""racketeer"") and wearing variously fitted collars (""only Sadat""--pictured with Begin and Carter--""has a good shirtmaker""). It's also filled out with personalia--Levitt's first bumbling days in business, how he combines custom-fitting and -cutting with assembly-line production to undercut the usual custom prices (the Shops' hallmark--and an interesting entrepreneurship angle), the proclivities of his famous customers and friends. There are pointers, too, on assembling a business-shirt wardrobe, selecting a suit, etc. The self-promotion and snob appeal are so blatant as to be almost ingratiating--and the man who does as Levitt tells him, will indeed look innocuously or impeccably well turned-out (depending on how much money he has to spend on clothes). If chutzpah and hype can put anything over (almost anything at all), this shouldn't want for takers.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1981

Categories: NONFICTION