Some men change the temperature of a room. Allure of Men is about them. More than two decades after Assouline first published a book by this name, the house returns to the subject with Ariel Wizman. The French writer, broadcaster, and DJ explores two centuries of masculine aura through fashion, photography, art, cinema, and philosophy. The visual journey goes everywhere from the extravagant elegance of Congo’s La Sape movement and the evolving menswear cultures of Seoul and Shanghai to Hollywood’s golden age movie stars and London’s swinging sixties.

The pages run from Jean-Baptiste Belley, France’s first Black deputy, painted by Anne-Louis Girodet in 1797, to A$AP Rocky, shot by Atiba Jefferson in 2025. In between are Serge Gainsbourg and Sidney Poitier, Elvis in black leather in 1968, Daniel Craig walking out of the sea in Casino Royale, and Burt Reynolds’s 1972 nude Cosmopolitan centerfold, plus Marcello Mastroianni, Bowie, Basquiat, Lewis Hamilton, and many others. You’ll find your type. Possibly several.

This unapologetically subjective study arrives as traditional notions of masculinity are being reconsidered. Gary Cooper, the original cover star, now graces the back cover, while the front makes way for Lenny Kravitz, joint in hand. “Allure is not a matter of rules or of symmetry,” Wizman writes. “It is what a man gives off when he has stopped asking to be looked at.”