Watching films and TV shows set in the prohibition era, everyone, or at least everyone middle class and above, always seems extremely well put together in terms of clothing and personal grooming. Given the complexity of outfits in those days and the differences in technology, roughly how long would it take an average man to get ready in the morning?
Depends on the "average" man. He wouldn't have showered daily. So assuming he puts brill cream in his hair, shaves with a safety razor, how long would that take? 20 minutes? He possibly had a razor blade dispenser in his bathroom to make replacing blades easy. He probably didn't iron his own shirts. His wife would have done it or if a single man he used a shirt service. Pick up and deliver laundry services were common. If like many people he lived in a residential hotel, that may have been a service in-house. Getting dressed wouldn't have taken much longer than it does today, unless he were wearing sock garters (not all men did), or braces/suspenders for his trousers, but again that's hardly a lengthy operation.