All About Attire.(books on men's clothing and fashions)(Brief Article)(Bibliography)

Alan Flusser, who is the president of a men's-clothing company, thanks his Buddhist mentor on the dedication page of DRESSING THE MAN (HarperCollins), and his book offers a meditative--and encyclopedic--look at the state of male fashion. To Flusser, fashion is more than superficial: "The best-dressed men consistently demonstrate the greatest degree of self-knowledge," he writes, and the truly stylish man's outward appearance "derives from an evolved inward eye."

DRESSING IN THE DARK (Assouline) suggests that a man can learn fashion sense from a trip to the local video store. "Pay less attention to the acting and more to the way the clothes express character," writes Marion Maneker, whose text accompanies photographs of Michael Douglas in "Wall Street," Tom Cruise in "Rain Man," and Steve McQueen in just about anything. But sometimes a bit of the movie critic is ...