This book is not a clothing guide, even if some advice is given here and there. This book is not a history of fashion and styles, even if some remarks touch on the evolution of customs. This book is not an essay either, even if a reflection is deployed there. This book is not a pamphlet either, even if the biases are quite numerous and the vehemence of the tone is not absent.

This work is not that of a scholar but of an amateur, in the primary sense of the term. The chronicles that compose it were written according to inspiration and moods. They can be read in the order in which they were subsequently grouped together - following, in a way, the recommended itinerary; one can also jump from one to the other, according to one's fancy and curiosity, and thus compose one's own reading path.

This book deals with masculine sartorial elegance, but not only with it. Elegance is presented as a way of being in the world and in society. The author, who symbolically calls himself "Chouan", sees in elegance a possible form of resistance to a hostile environment, the enemy of beauty. Individual resistance first, but which he does not despair of seeing extend to the community. Resistance within everyone's reach provided that one has a minimum of taste and agrees to learn.

Illustrations by Romée de Saint Céran