Gay Talese wears a fedora. He also wears a three-piece suit, a pocket square, and very often a rather grand scarf. Sometimes, it seems as though he is the last man in America to dress this way, but that is because he is the last journalist in America to write the way he does.

These two facts about Talese, his taste in clothes and his way with words, are not coincidental. For Talese, writing well and dressing well are inextricably linked. “I would always dress as if I was on some very important business,” he once said in an interview. “I dressed up for a story. I thought the story is important business.”