In Napoleon’s Closet, Margaret Waller tells the story of how powerful Western men went from flaunting their influence through clothing choices to dressing in sober, understated ways—and what that shift reveals about gender, class, and sexuality. Centering on an unlikely pair, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) and the defrocked priest turned fashion editor Pierre Antoine Le Boux La Mésangère (1761-1831), the book traces the origins of modern masculinity and “the closet”—from knee breeches and military uniforms to priests’ robes, imperial regalia, and early fashion magazines. In this lively and unorthodox exploration of what men wore and what masculinity was supposed to look like, Waller reveals the little-studied interconnectedness of normative and queer masculinity. In this Q&A, she discusses why she wrote the book and why this history matters today.

Q: How do people react when you tell them the title of your book, Napoleon’s Closet?

Margaret Waller: Often they look at me quizzically, not sure they’ve understood. Is it about his clothes? Yes, it’s about what he wore over the course of his lifetime, from infancy to imperial rule. Does the title mean that there’s something queer about Napoleon Bonaparte? Yes, but not in the way you might think. The book does not “out” any of its historical figures. But it does “queer,” or trouble, neat definitions of masculinity and heterosexuality to explore what they hide. To unsettle commonplaces, I decided to pair the Emperor of the French with his contemporary, La Mésangère, now known only to specialists, who became the “emperor” of fashion. In this new version of modernity, the sartorial and behavioral discipline required of boys and men in all-male institutions prefigures today’s men in suits, normcore millennials, and Trump look-alikes.

Q: Why Napoleon and La Mésangère?

Waller: Although Napoleon took the military route and La Mésangère became a priest, both were provincial outsiders from the lower nobility who had to learn to look and behave like insiders. Eventually, each wielded the power to tell others what to wear while breaking their own rules. Napoleon required his military officers and courtiers to dress in lavish uniforms but reserved for himself the right to wear a plain gray overcoat and simple two-cornered black hat. La Mésangère was the furthest thing from à la mode. For decades, he wore a laughably old-fashioned cornflower blue suit and powdered wig. Their clothing and the attire they touted highlight the paradoxes of what fashion historians call the Great Masculine Renunciation.

Q: What is “queer” about Napoleon’s Closet?

Waller: Oscar Wilde put it this way: “Men say they don’t particularly care how they dress, and that it is little matter. I am bound to reply that I don’t believe them and don’t think that you do either.” Mapping the lives of Bonaparte and La Mésangère before and after the French Revolution, Napoleon’s Closet explores this common form of denial, revealing how sexual and gender norms are themselves odd, strange, queer.

Q: What led you to write this book?

Waller: To begin with, a Catholic girlhood and a teacher who asked our class: “What if I told you I don’t have a belly button?” Silence. Then: “I’m a priest. Does that mean you should believe everything I say?” His point was that the Church was infallible, but priests weren’t. I didn’t buy the first part, but that second lesson spoke to me. In Napoleon’s Closet, I gravitate toward instances where men’s conventional attire can make them look like something they aren’t. As someone who liked dressing up to pretend she had money as well as style, and passed as straight for forty years, I know a lot about closets and the power of clothing to hide and reveal.

Q: What role does the French Revolution play?

Waller: The revolutionary period (1789-99) not only blew up the political landscape, it also redefined proper elite masculinity as a renunciation of “frilly” feminine attire. Under the shadow of the guillotine, something as simple as the wrong color cockade or kind of trousers was perceived as a threat to the state. In Paris, La Mésangère had the good sense to disguise his background as a former priest and son of a minor nobleman from the counterrevolutionary West. Bonaparte kept his royal army uniform but navigated a precarious path, switching his allegiance between France and Corsica. The tabula rasa of the revolution allowed two obscure men from the provinces, and legions of others, to reinvent themselves entirely. Napoleon’s Closet examines those men who followed the new rules, those who didn’t, and those who only pretended to.

Q: Why do fashion magazines play a central role in this book about masculinity?

Waller: Few today know that the first modern fashion magazines—periodicals offering color illustrations of the latest styles—were financed, produced, and edited almost exclusively by men. They were also for and about men as well as women. Napoleon’s Closet shows how the success of La Mésangère’s Journal des Dames et des Modes (Ladies’ Fashion Magazine) (1797-1839) popularized the myth that la mode is naturally for women, not men. Stay tuned. La Mésangère only seemed not to care a fig about what he wore.