INTRODUCTION

To celebrate the 25th year of Hiltons Princeton, I offer these selections from a book I wrote when we opened, hoping to establish my credentials as a menswear maven. Three generations of Hiltons preceded me in a business that began in the mid-1880s. Their successes and their mistakes were my business education; their expertise and impeccable style a retailer's textbook. I thought folks should know.

The book's premise is that five categories of occasion call for five different approaches to dress. Day off, cleaning the garage? Level One. Your daughter's wedding? Level Five. Jay Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald's iconic antihero, understood better than anyone that what you wear is who you are. His ghost resides in every haberdashery.

I never tried to publish Gatsby's Ghost. The family history turned out to be a more interesting saga, and the how-to material gave way to the real emotional and spiritual experiences of a life in clothing. That work became a memoir. You can find it on Amazon: A Tailor-Made Man.

Yet lamentations persist about the decline of American men's dress. My thought is to offer some advice, to introduce Gatsby's Ghost online, a chapter at a time. My hope is that it will haunt you, happily, and to good result.