The available images of each of those men, no less than those of Newman, McQueen and Grant, convey a powerful sense of the difference between wearing one’s clothes and having them wear you. And in this they are all starkly unlike the dress-up dolls turned out in borrowed tuxedos at the Emmy Awards or any of the now ubiquitous and wholly purgatorial red carpet events.

“The distinction between then and now is this idea that celebrities, the supposed role models, tend to be styled,” Josh Sims, author of “Icons of Men’s Style,” said by telephone from London. “They have assistants and their look is a professional, very deliberate creation of a team.”

That is not to suggest that the male Hollywood stars of the last century were unconcerned about image, he added. It is well established that Steve McQueen required that his bluejeans were tailored in such a way that one of his favorite assets, his behind, was well accentuated.

The care McQueen took with his off-screen appearance was also mirrored in the stylish cut of the clothes he wore in some of the films that seem to play in an infinite rerun loop in the imaginations of many men’s wear designers — classics like “Bullitt” and “The Thomas Crowne Affair.”

“Even the khakis he wears in ‘The Great Escape’ were not in any way accurate to the period,” Mr. Sims said. Standard-issue trousers for members of the Allied forces during World War II would have been wide legged and with a high-waist, ample in the rear. “McQueen had his cut to a ’60s proportion” for the film, Mr. Sims said. “They were much slenderer and much more fitted than the traditional trouser cut.”