Elegance, Nino Cerruti once said, got on his nerves. It was the sort of remark you can afford to toss off when you are easily the most elegant man in the room. And Mr. Cerruti, who died last month at age 91, embodied that attribute, a quality seldom encountered yet unmistakable when you are in its presence. “It can be learned, but you have to have a natural disposition for it,” he said in an interview in L’Officiel USA last year.

Though sartorial elegance is an instinct, as Mr. Cerruti suggested, it can be anatomized. It derives from knowing and remaining true to yourself; from ruthlessly assessing physical flaws and assets in order to understand the effect of your body moving through space. It depends, to a degree, on learning the fundaments of dressing before pitching them.