Sporty Parisian dandies of the 1830s: a girdle helped one achieve this silhouette. The man on the left wears a
frock coat, the man on the right wears a
morning coat
A dandy[1] is a man who places particular
importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and the cultivation of
leisurely hobbies. Historically, especially in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, a dandy often strove to
imitate an aristocratic style of life despite being of middle-class background.
The dandy is always male.
Given these connotations, dandyism can be seen as a political protestation against the rise of egalitarian principles — often including nostalgic adherence to feudal or pre-industrial values, such as
the ideals of "the perfect gentleman" or "the autonomous aristocrat".
Though previous manifestations, of Alcibiades, and of the petit-maître and the
muscadin have been noted by John C. Prevost,[2] the
modern practice of dandyism first appeared in the revolutionary 1790s, both in London
and in Paris. The dandy cultivated skeptical reserve, yet to such extremes that the
novelist George Meredith, himself no dandy, once defined "cynicism" as "intellectual
dandyism"; nevertheless, the Scarlet Pimpernel is one of the great dandies of
literature. Some took a more benign view; Thomas Carlyle in his book Sartor
Resartus, wrote that a dandy was no more than "a clothes-wearing man".
Charles Baudelaire, in the later, "metaphysical" phase of dandyism[3] defined the dandy as one who elevates aesthetics to a living religion,[4]
that the dandy's mere existence reproaches the responsible citizen of the middle class: "Dandyism in certain respects comes close
to spirituality and to stoicism" and "These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own
persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking .... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe,
dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than
the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind."
Etymology
The word dandy first appears in a Scottish border ballad, circa 1780, but probably without its more recent meaning. The original, full form of
'dandy' may have been jack-a-dandy, (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911); it was a vogue word during the Napoleonic
Wars. In that contemporary slang, 'a dandy' was differentiated from 'a fop' in that the dandy's dress was more refined and sober than the fop's.
In the 21st century, the word "dandy" is a jocular, often sarcastic adjective meaning "fine" or "great", while "a dandy"
refers to a well-groomed, well-dressed, and self-absorbed man.
Beau Brummell and early British dandyism
The model dandy in British society was George Bryan
"Beau" Brummell (1778-1840), an undergraduate student at Oriel College,
Oxford, and an associate of the Prince
Regent: ever unpowdered, unperfumed, immaculately bathed and shaved, and dressed in a plain, dark blue coat, perfectly
brushed, perfectly fitted, showing much perfectly starched linen, all freshly laundered, and composed with an elaborately knotted
cravat. From the mid 1790s, Beau Brummell was the early incarnation of 'the celebrity' man chiefly famous for being a laconically witty clothes-horse.
By the time Pitt taxed hair powder in 1795 to help pay for the war against
France, Brummell had already abandoned wearing a wig, and had his hair cut in the Roman fashion, "à la Brutus". Moreover, he led
the transition from breeches to snugly tailored dark "pantaloons," which directly lead to
contemporary trousers, the sartorial mainstay of men's clothes in the Western world for the past two centuries. In 1799, upon
coming of age, Beau Brummell inherited from his father a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, which he spent mostly on costume,
gambling, and high living. In 1816 he suffered bankruptcy, the dandy's stereotyped fate; he fled his creditors to France, quietly
dying in 1840, in a Caen lunatic asylum, just shy of his sixty-second birthday.
Men of more notable accomplishment than Beau Brummell also adopted the dandiacal pose: George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron occasionally dressed the part, helping
re-introduce the frilled, lace-cuffed and lace-collared "poet shirt." In that spirit, he had his portrait painted in Albanian
costume.
Another prominent dandy of the period was Alfred Guillaume Gabriel
d'Orsay, the Count d'Orsay, who had been friends with Byron and moved in the highest social circles of London.
Dandyism in France
The beginnings of dandyism in France were bound up with the politics of the French
revolution; the initial stage of dandyism, the gilded youth, was a political statement of dressing in an aristocratic style
in order to distinguish its members from the sans-culottes.
During his heyday, Beau Brummell's dictat on both fashion and etiquette reigned supreme. His habits of dress and
fashion were much imitated, especially in France, where, in a curious development, they became
the rage, especially in bohemian quarters. There, dandies sometimes were celebrated in
revolutionary terms: self-created men of consciously designed personality, radically breaking with past traditions. With
elaborate dress and idle, decadent styles of life, French bohemian dandies sought to convey
contempt for and superiority to bourgeois society. In the latter nineteenth century, this fancy-dress bohemianism was a major
influence upon the Symbolist movement in French literature.
Baudelaire was deeply interested in dandyism, and memorably wrote that a dandy aspirant must have "no profession other than
elegance . . . no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons . . . . The dandy must aspire to
be sublime without interruption; he must live and sleep before a mirror." Other French intellectuals also were interested in the
dandies strolling the streets and boulevards of Paris. Jules Amédée Barbey
d'Aurevilly wrote The Anatomy of Dandyism, an essay devoted, in great measure, to examining the career of Beau
Brummell.
Later Dandyism
The gilded 1890s provided many suitably sheltered settings for dandyism. The poets Algernon Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, the American artist James McNeill Whistler,
Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Max Beerbohm were
dandies of the period, as was Robert de Montesquiou — Marcel Proust's inspiration for the Baron de Charlus; in Italy Gabriele d'Annunzio and Carlo Bugatti exemplified the artistic
bohemian dandyism of the fin de siecle.
The twentieth century has been impatient with dandyism: the Prince of Wales, briefly
Edward VIII was a dandy; it did not increase his public appeal.
Nevertheless George Walden, in the essay Who's a Dandy?, identifies
Noël Coward, Lee Hudson Teslik, Andy Warhol, Emmet McDermott, Sam Rountree
Williams and Quentin Crisp as modern dandies.
In Japan, dandyism became a fashion subculture during the late 1990s.
Female Dandies
The female equivalents to nineteenth-century dandies could be found in the demimonde, in such extravagant women as the courtesan Cora Pearl,
while the Marchesa Luisa Casati lived a dandy's career in post–World War I Venice;
analogously, the artistic diva might be considered a female dandy. In 1819, the novel "Charms of
Dandyism" was published "by Olivia Moreland, chief of the female dandies"; although probably written by Thomas Ashe, 'Olivia
Moreland' may have existed, as Ashe did write several novels about living persons. Throughout the novel, dandyism is associated
with "living in style".
Royal Dandies
The two best-known royal dandies were both kings of the United Kingdom-George IV and his grandnephew, Edward
VII. Both were notorious womanizers and gluttons.
Quotations
A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of
his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that
the others dress to live, he lives to dress ... And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is
it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a living
object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light....
– Thomas Carlyle, "The Dandiacal Body", in
Sartor Resartus
How would I describe myself? Well, I'm a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing
of Clothes. Every faculty of my soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of
Clothes wisely and well: so that the others dress to live, I live to dress ... And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and
Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that I ask in return? Solely, I may say, that you would recognise my existence; would admit
me to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light.... I also collect
stamps.
– Emmet McDermott, "My Dandiacal Body"
One should either be a work of Art, or wear a work of Art
– Oscar Wilde
See also
Notes
- ^ "One who studies ostentatiously to dress fashionably and elegantly; a
fop, an exquisite." (OED).
- ^ Le Dandysme en France (1817-1839) (Geneva and Paris) 1957.
- ^ See Prevost 1957.
- ^ Baudelaire, in his essay about painter Constantin Guys, "The Painter of Modern Life".
Further reading
- Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules. Of Dandyism and of George Brummell. Translated by Douglas Ainslie. New York: PAJ
Publications, 1988.
- Carassus, Émile. Le Mythe du Dandy 1971.
- Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. In A Carlyle Reader: Selections from the Writings of Thomas Carlyle. Edited
by G.B. Tennyson. London: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
- Jesse, Captain William. The Life of Beau Brummell. London: The Navarre Society Limited, 1927.
- Lytton, Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton. Pelham or the
Adventures of a Gentleman. Edited by Jerome McGann. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1972.
- Moers, Ellen. The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm. London: Secker and Warburg, 1960.
- Murray, Venetia. An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England. New York: Viking, 1998.
- Nicolay, Claire. Origins and Reception of Regency Dandyism: Brummell to Baudelaire. Ph. D. diss., Loyola U of Chicago,
1998.
- Prevost , John C., Le Dandysme en France (1817-1839) (Geneva and Paris) 1957.
- Stanton, Domna. The Aristoicrat as Art 1980.
- Wharton, Grace and Philip. Wits and Beaux of Society. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1861.
External links
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