-By Michael Macko, Details Fashion Director

When I was a teenager, I used to spend my summers on Long Beach Island in Jersey working as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant called the Spaghetti Pot. It was at Beach Haven Books there that I came across two books that ignited my love of style: Looking Good: A Guide for Men, by Charles Hix, and its follow-up, Dressing Right. I devoured their contents, which came packaged in short, witty chapters like one on texture titled "Surface Thoughts." Then I spouted off the information to any other guys I came in contact with.

And though 30 years have passed since I first picked them up, most of the information I embraced then is still plenty relevant. Hix, a prominent men's fashion journalist in his day, steers clear of the leisure-suit and polyester-shirt clichés of the seventies to put together what's basically a metrosexual manifesto—nearly a quarter of a century before the term was coined.

Beyond the style instruction, there's the beautiful black-and-white photography. The most notable images are by Bruce Weber, including an inspiring portrait of the photographer himself looking especially cool in his inimitable laid-back way. My current favorite shot is of a man in rolled-up Levi's, Topsiders, and the most perfect white athletic socks—which I'm currently trying to hunt down!—from Dressing Right. This combo would look right at home in Williamsburg or Nolita now.

Speaking of tracking something down, getting your hands on copies of Looking Good and Dressing Right requires a little legwork, but with diligence you can find good used ones on eBay or at vintage bookstores.

Photographs courtesy of Looking Good and Dressing Right

-By Michael Macko, Details Fashion Director

This season, two of my favorite iconic styles are coming together in the form of Big Sur fashion. One-half Dead Poets Society and one-half Kelly Slater, this Northern California beach look is not as colorful and precious as the classic New England preppiness and not as sun-bleached and low-slung as classic surf style.

Courtesy of Moldova.org/Film.com

The geographical origin of the two-for-one look is the sparsely populated stretch of California coast that starts 120 miles south of San Francisco and ends 245 miles north of Los Angeles.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Big Sur has long attracted writers and artists, including Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, and Jack Kerouac, who spent a few days there in the early sixties and wrote a novel in tribute to his clearly very memorable experience.

Courtesy of Amazon.com

And musicians have written odes as well. On their 1973 album Holland, the Beach Boys devoted a trilogy of songs called "California" to the region, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers sang its praises in their 2000 single "Road Trippin'."

Courtesy of Amazon.com

In terms of style, there are plenty of ways to adopt the buttoned-up, beachy vibe of the area, but nothing says "I know the seasons are changing, but I'm not giving in without a fight" like a pair of corduroy shorts. (The ones shown here are from Rugby.)

Courtesy of Rugby

Next throw on a snap-front, Western-style shirt. Instead of the standard-issue pattern, though, reach for an autumnal ombre plaid from Pendleton. The snap-front is becoming increasingly popular—a trend I see continuing for a few seasons.

Photograph by Michael Macko

The perfect mix of California-surf cool and autumnal warmth is these fleece-lined slip-ons from Vans in my favorite color, dachshund. They are by far the most comfortable shoes around and the closest thing to wearing your slippers out of the house.

Photograph by Michael Macko

Of course, you can't do Big Sur style without sunglasses. These are an upgrade of the classic Ray-Ban Aviator, called Ultra Aviator. They are plated in 22K gold, and are being produced in a limited edition of 25,000 to celebrate the glasses' 70th anniversary.

Photograph by Michael Macko.

Finally, top it all off with a modernized Baja pullover from NSF, a line that epitomizes the West Coast vibe but with updated fabrics and silhouettes. Instead of a Spicoli knit that scratches your face every time you take it off, this one's in softer cotton.

Photograph by Michael Macko

And if you can't head west or wear corduroy shorts to the office, go with one of Jonathan Adler's candles. His Big Sur scent blends crisp bergamot, rich vetiver, and warm cedarwood and nutmeg. It will give you the sensation of being relaxed on a beach at dusk—but not covered in sand.

Photograph by Michael Macko

-By Michael Macko, Details Fashion Director

The keffiyeh started out as a headdress for Arab men, protecting them from direct sun exposure and shielding their eyes and mouths from blowing sand. In the sixties, the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat adopted it as a symbol of the resistance movement and was rarely seen without one. And like the Che Guevara T-shirt, the keffiyeh quickly went from political symbol to fashion statement, causing controversy along the way: In May, Dunkin Donuts pulled a commercial featuring Rachael Ray after the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin claimed that the scarf she was wearing in the ad resembled a keffiyeh.

Courtesy of Michael Macko/YouTube

While the company A Peace Treaty didn't introduce the signifier-cum-accessory to the fashion world, the two women behind the scarf line that launched this year—Farah Malik, a Pakistani Muslim, and Dana Arbib, a Libyan Jew—have updated its meaning. The friends were originally inspired by the fall/winter 2007 Balenciaga show that featured embellished scarves in the style of the keffiyeh. They took that idea and evolved it further, fashioning their versions from fabrics in bold checks and in-your-face stripes that don't so much co-opt the keffiyeh's message as riff on it.

Courtesy of Michael Macko

The Peace Treaty girls didn't just want to make a beautiful product, though—they also wanted to do some good. Each scarf is hand-sourced from a different region of Pakistan, where, as with Scotland's tartans, weaving techniques are indigenous to specific areas. This means that local craftspeople get to continue to hone their skills while earning a living. Each scarf takes approximately two months to complete, and only 30 of each style are made.

Courtesy of A Peace Treaty

Get your hands on one now and you can wear it through Indian summer and right into the chill of autumn. It's also important to note: The summer scarf was the standout accessory on the spring 2009 runways, so when the warmer weather returns, you'll be ahead of the other guy by a neck.

-By Michael Macko, Details Fashion Director

A story on the front page of the June 4 edition of the Wall Street Journal sounded the death knell of the necktie in America. The article focused on the hard times for the American Dress Furnishings Association, a trade group that represents American tie makers, whose membership dropped from 120 during its 1980s, power-tie heyday to just 25 at present. The story cited a recent Gallup poll, which found that the number of men in the United States who reported wearing ties to work every day reached a record low of 6 percent last year, down from 10 percent in 2002.

Ties, from left: Z Zegna, Alexander Olch. John Varvatos, Prada. Tie bars, from left: Paul Stuart, Dolce & Gabbana. (Photo by Michael Macko)

But the truth is—as many fashion insiders have noted—rumors of the necktie's demise have been greatly exaggerated. "Ties are absolutely not dead to the fashionable younger guy, who doesn't have to wear one," says wunderkind tie designer Alexander Olch. Men in their twenties and thirties don't need to wear a knot with wing tips and a suit for meetings—they choose to put one on, more likely with jeans and a cardigan.

Photo courtesy of Michael Macko

One key component to this casual necktie look is the tie bar. Before its 21st-century renaissance, the accessory-to-the-accessory found fans among the likes of Fred Astaire and Frank Sinatra.

Tie by Dolce & Gabanna. Tie bar by Thom Browne. (Photo by Michael Macko)

And while this add-on is hardly new to the modern stylish guy, cool designers like Thom Browne and Dolce & Gabbana are now retrofitting it to go with the super-skinny ties that were still all over the fall runways (another death prematurely reported). Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana—who have a tie that comes in at less than 1.5 inches wide—have shrunk the classic tie bar proportionately. Browne created one that, at one inch, is the smallest of the lot, and he did so out of personal necessity. "My ties are narrower than most," he says. That's no small feat.

-By Michael Macko, Details Fashion Director

Sure, movies have always influenced fashion, but often before we see a story on the big screen, we read the book and envision it in our minds. Classic novels like Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, and even American Psycho provide such vivid descriptions of the characters' attire that you don't need a film to get a sense of their appearance.

Images courtesy of Amazon.com

Perhaps the most noteworthy literary style-shaper is The Great Gatsby. My favorite quote comes when Gatsby starts showing Daisy Buchanan his shirts, telling her, "I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall." As he pulls them out of the cabinet, she starts to sob and utters one of the most iconic literary quotes of all time: "It makes me sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before."

From top: Brooks Brothers Black Fleece, Michael Bastian (2), Brooks Brothers Black Fleece, Band of Outsiders, Steven Alan, Thom Browne, Brooks Brothers, Tim Hamilton, GANT created by Jeffrey (Photo by Michael Macko)

I'm feeling exactly the same emotion as Daisy did. There have never been better shirts out there, and I want them all. Fashion goes through cycles, fluctuating between woven (dress shirts) and jersey (T-shirts), and we're definitely in a woven phase. When I was recently at Jeffrey, the meatpacking district's retail barometer of cool, I was pleasantly surprised to see racks of oxford-cloth shirts. While the fabric is classic, the cuts—trimmer and with higher armholes—make them modern. The owner Jeffrey Kalinsky noted that "the oxford-cloth shirt hasn't been more popular since the seventies."

Photo by Michael Macko / Courtesy of Urban Outfitters

If you're more of a T-shirt guy—or want to wear your literary taste in a more literal form—check out a new line from Mustache Brigade that features the covers of classic books straight off a high-school reading list, like Catch-22 and Death of a Salesman.

-By Michael Macko, Details Fashion Director

Photos by Michael Macko

During a recent weekend in the city, I went shopping to escape the heat, and I realized that everything I bought—and nearly everything being sold—was either vintage or made to look that way.

I love items that have an instant history—that have already been worn in, broken in, and distressed. The Japanese have a philosophy called wabi-sabi, which essentially says that nothing is perfect and that the beauty is in the imperfections. So when the T-shirt you just bought already has holes in it, you don't worry so much about spilling your macchiato on it. Go ahead and drip. Sure, the threadbare, tattered look isn't entirely new (hello, Abercrombie), but the guy who's wearing it is.

My friend Seth Weisser, co-owner of the vintage clothing store What Comes Around Goes Around and the designer of the nostalgic collection of the same name, has his own theory about perfection. As he puts it, "Most men have to be polished and dressed up all day long, so when they relax they want to be in a comfort zone." He also cited what he calls vintage frustration as one reason for the success of his own line and lines like Nike Vintage: The perfect, well-worn items that would take weeks or months to find scouring flea markets or trolling eBay are now readily available to you pre-distressed—and in your size.

Alex Carleton, the founder and designer of must-wear label, Rogues Gallery says, "The worn-in hand of a great vintage T-shirt—when the cotton has the perfect texture—is such an amazing find. I am interested in the patina that things develop with age—and how that effects that garment and connects you with a different time and place." And you thought you were just wearing an old shirt.

Info on where I bought my favorite new, old, and old-looking finds is below.

Re-worked vintage "Atlantic" T-shirt ($95) by Rogues Gallery available at roguesgallery.com.

J. Crew vintage-style ID bracelet ($150) available at jcrew.com.

-By Michael Macko, Details Fashion Director

"I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life.
Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives."

Not since the Verve unleashed "Bittersweet Symphony" in 1997 has the fashion crowd found such an obvious anthem as they have in MGMT's "Time to Pretend."

Photos courtesy of Festival Freak and MGMT

The hit song is from the two-man band—Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden—whose synthesized sounds, trippy videos, and poignant-yet-ironic lyrics strike a chord with the disenfranchised fashion league of today.

The music video for MGMT's single "Time to Pretend"

The Brooklyn-based duo met in 2001 at Wesleyan University, where they started performing 15-minute, one-song shows at the college's notorious clothing-optional dorm. The set list? The Ghost Busters theme, performed ad nauseam, inspiring a cluster of fans to create an indie label just to produce the group's first six-song EP.

Fast-forward to the spring/summer 2009 men's runway presentations in Milan, Paris, and New York. Gucci's Frida Giannini, who played "Time to Pretend" as her event's last track, even went so far as to dedicate her show to the band. The producers of Gossip Girl—who are tapped into what's right now in the fashion world—used the song in the show's season finale this past May.

Gucci's full spring/summer 2009 men's collection. "Time to Pretend" begins playing at 5:12. (Photos courtesy of Men.Style.com)

And the style love is widespread: Burberry's Christopher Bailey told me, "I love MGMT. I love the sense of romance and whimsy in their songs, and their sound and attitude is refreshing and modern."

For more on MGMT, visit the band's MySpace page.

-By Michael Macko, Details Fashion Director

When Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited, he probably didn't expect that the title to be taken so literally, but 63 years after the novel's publication—and 27 years after the epic BBC miniseries starring Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder and Anthony Andrews as the teddy-bear-toting Sebastian Flyte—Miramax is releasing a new take on the tale of love and life during the bucolic days between the wars in gentrified England.

Photos courtesy of the Internet Movie Database

The original 1981 production was so influential that it had all of America wearing cricket sweaters and vintage linen vests—and even eventually inspired Marc Jacobs' seminal spring 2005 Louis Vuitton men's collection, which included an LV teddy bear.

Louis Vuitton (photos courtesy of Men.Style.com)

Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw, the model-like actors who play Charles and Sebastian this go, wear costumes that are style touchstones in the making: white ties and tails, Fair Isle vests, and a noteworthy pair of red silk pajamas (worn with a wristwatch).

Photos courtesy of The Internet Movie Database

But then again, after seeing all of the loose, drawstring waist pants on the runways of Europe last month from Dolce & Gabbana, Bottega Veneta, and Giorgio Armani, it looks like Brideshead's latest fashion moment is already under way.

Clockwise from top left: Bottega Veneta, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Dolce & Gabbana (photos courtesy of Men.Style.com)

Brideshead Revisited opens in select theaters on July 25.

The trailer for Brideshead Revisited