In this chapter, I set out to define the genre in broad terms, review the scholarly literature on fashion and popular romance, position my own work in that space, and provide a reading of how we might study men's fashion and the popular romance novel by way of the example of the suit, and finally provide some future directions. (538)
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The romance novel, thus, is, [...] a novel about relationships. These novels tell the story of two (or more) people falling in love with one another and committing to one another to live happily ever after (or, at least, happily for now). But they do more than just this; these novels comment on a host of issues, themes, and concerns, and I would argue that fashion is one of those concerns. (539)
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While little has been said on fashion in the romance novel broadly understood, even less has been said about men's fashion in particular. (539)
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Clothing becomes an important site for a consideration of how the romance novel constructs and represents men's bodies, particularly in terms of its desirability. [...] The suit is representative of the masculinity that lies beneath the fabrics that cover the body. The hero embodies, as Radway argued, 'spectacular masculinity' (128). (545)
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The suit can also become a site of excess, which also involves success. Men in romance novels are often successful business tycoons, or they are political elites, and sometimes even royalty. In these instances, the suits testify to another side of their masculinity, which speaks to privilege, particularly a kind of financial privilege. The suit can be a sign not only of wealth and financial stability but excess, which is not a moral qualifier (at least not necessarily) but rather about the sheer immensity of that wealth. This is wealth that can afford the finest of luxuries, for example. (546)
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