ASSOULINEAllure of Men

Some men enter a room and the air changes. Composure, nonchalance, an unhurried confidence: it cannot be taught, yet it is instantly recognized. More than two decades after Assouline first explored male style, Allure of Men returns to examine this elusive aura. Lenny Kravitz, photographed by Mark Seliger, is on the front cover, and original cover star Gary Cooper, captured by Sir Cecil Beaton, is on the back. The book opens with an epigraph from Francois Baudot, author of the 2000 edition, and pairs image with voice throughout. Lucian Freud’s words on aura sit beside Burt Reynolds’s 1972 Cosmopolitan centerfold. Diana Vreeland’s description of allure as “something around you, like perfume” accompanies a 2023 Kith portrait of Brian Cox. From the Yoruba ideal of itutu to Congo’s La Sape and the fluid menswear of Seoul and Shanghai, the pages move across eras and continents. Along the way they gather David Bowie, Miles Davis, Sidney Poitier, Michael Jordan, Lewis Hamilton, and Yves Saint Laurent. Text by French author, DJ, journalist, and director Ariel Wizman frames the story through philosophy and global history. “An elegant man creates a kind of suspense, of intrigue that makes us want to enter his world,” he writes. For anyone who has wondered why certain men are impossible to look away from, Allure of Men is a study of charisma in all its forms.