A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance and personal grooming, refined language and leisurely hobbies. A dandy could be a self-made man both in person and persona, who emulated the aristocratic style of life regardless of his middle-class origin, birth, and background, especially during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain.[1][2][3]
Early manifestations of dandyism were Le petit-maître (the Little Master) and the musk-wearing Muscadin ruffians of the middle-class Thermidorean reaction (1794–1795). Modern dandyism, however, emerged in stratified societies of Europe during the 1790s revolution periods, especially in London and Paris.[4] Within social settings, the dandy cultivated a persona characterized by extreme posed cynicism, or "intellectual dandyism" as defined by Victorian novelist George Meredith; whereas Thomas Carlyle, in his novel Sartor Resartus (1831), dismissed the dandy as "a clothes-wearing man"; Honoré de Balzac's La fille aux yeux d'or (1835) chronicled the idle life of Henri de Marsay, a model French dandy whose downfall stemmed from his obsessive Romanticism in the pursuit of love, which led him to yield to sexual passion and murderous jealousy.
In the metaphysical phase of dandyism, the poet Charles Baudelaire portrayed the dandy as an existential reproach to the conformity of contemporary middle-class men, cultivating the idea of beauty and aesthetics akin to a living religion. The dandy lifestyle, in certain respects, "comes close to spirituality and to stoicism" as an approach to living daily life,[5] while its followers "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 . . . [because] Dandyism is a form of Romanticism. 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 [material] things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of mind."[6]
The linkage of clothing and political protest was a particularly English characteristic in 18th-century Britain;[7] the sociologic connotation was that dandyism embodied a reactionary form of protest against social equality and the leveling effects of egalitarian principles. Thus, the dandy represented a nostalgic yearning for feudal values and the ideals of the perfect gentleman as well as the autonomous aristocrat — referring to men of self-made person and persona. The social existence of the dandy, paradoxically, required the gaze of spectators, an audience, and readers who consumed their "successfully marketed lives" in the public sphere. Figures such as playwright Oscar Wilde and poet Lord Byron personified the dual social roles of the dandy: the dandy-as-writer, and the dandy-as-persona; each role a source of gossip and scandal, confining each man to the realm of entertaining high society.[8]
Etymology
The earliest record of the word dandy dates back to the late 1700s, in Scottish Song[1]. Since the late 18th century, the word dandy has been rumored to be an abbreviated usage of the 17th-century British jack-a-dandy used to described a conceited man.[9] In British North America, prior to American Revolution (1765–1791), a British version of the song "Yankee Doodle" in its first verse: "Yankee Doodle went to town, / Upon a little pony; / He stuck a feather in his hat, / And called it Macoroni . . ." and chorus: "Yankee Doodle, keep it up, / Yankee Doodle Dandy, / Mind the music and the step, / And with the girls be handy. . . ." derided the rustic manner and perceived poverty of colonial American. The lyrics, particularly the reference to "stuck a feather in his hat" and "called it Macoroni," suggested that adorning fashionable attire (a fine horse and gold-braided clothing) was what set the dandy apart from colonial society.[10] In other cultural contexts, an Anglo–Scottish border ballad dated around 1780 utilized dandy in its Scottish connotation and not the derisive British usage populated in colonial North America.[11] Since the 18th century, contemporary British usage has drawn a distinction between a dandy and a fop, with the former characterized by a more restrained and refined wardrobe compared to the flamboyant and ostentatious attire of the latter.[12]
The illustration, by E. J. Sullivan, is from an 1898 edition of the novel Sartor Resartus (1831), by Thomas Carlyle.
Beau Brummell (George Bryan Brummell, 1778–1840) was the model British dandy since his days as an undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford, and later as an associate of the Prince Regent (George IV) — all despite not being an aristocrat. Always bathed and shaved, always powdered and perfumed, always groomed and immaculately dressed in a dark-blue coat of plain style.[13] Sartorially, the look of Brummell's tailoring was perfectly fitted, clean, and displayed much linen; an elaborately knotted cravat completed the aesthetics of Brummell's suite of clothes. During the mid–1790s, the handsome Beau Brummell became a personable man-about-town in Regency London's high society, who was famous for being famous and celebrated "based on nothing at all" but personal charm and social connections.[14][15]
During the national politics of the Regency era (1795–1837), by the time that Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger had introduced the Duty on Hair Powder Act (1795) in order to fund the Britain's war efforts against France and discouraged the use of foodstuffs as hair powder, the dandy Brummell already had abandoned wearing a powdered wig and wore his hair cut à la Brutus, in the Roman fashion. Moreover, Brummell also led the sartorial transition from breeches to tailored pantaloons, which eventually evolved into modern trousers.
Upon coming of age in 1799, Brummell received a paternal inheritance of thirty thousand pounds sterling, which he squandered on a high life of gambling, lavish tailors, and visits to brothels. Eventually declaring bankruptcy in 1816, Brummell fled England to France, where he lived in destitution and pursued by creditors; in 1840, at the age of sixty-one years, Beau Brummell passed away in a lunatic asylum in Caen, marking the tragic end to his once-glamorous legacy.[16] Nonetheless, despite his ignominious end, Brummell's influence on European fashion endured, with men across the continent seeking to emulate his dandyism. Among which was the poetical persona of Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron, 1788–1824) wore a poet's shirt featuring a lace-collar, a lace-placket, and lace-cuffs in a portrait of himself in Albanian national costume in 1813;[17]Count d'Orsay (Alfred Guillaume Gabriel Grimod d'Orsay, 1801–1852) himself a prominent figure in upper-class social circles and an acquaintance of Lord Bryon likewise embodied the spirit of dandy within elite British society.
In chapter "The Dandiacal Body" of the novel Sartor Resartus (Carlyle, 1831), Thomas Carlyle described the dandy's symbolic social function as a man and a persona of refined masculinity:
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 as 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.[18]
In the mid-19th century, amidst the restricted palette of muted colors for men's clothing, the English dandy dedicated meticulous attention to the finer details of sartorial refinement (design, cut, and style), including: "The quality of the fine woollen cloth, the slope of a pocket flap or coat revers, exactly the right colour for the gloves, the correct amount of shine on boots and shoes, and so on. It was an image of a well-dressed man who, while taking infinite pains about his appearance, affected indifference to it. This refined dandyism continued to be regarded as an essential strand of male Englishness."[19]
In monarchic France, dandyism was ideologically bound to the egalitarian politics of the French Revolution (1789–1799); thus the dandyism of the jeunesse dorée (the Gilded Youth) was their political statement of aristocratic style in effort to differentiate and distinguish themselves from the working-class sans-culottes, from the poor men who owned no stylish knee-breeches made of silk.
In the late 18th century, British and French men abided Beau Brummell's dictates about fashion and etiquette, especially the French bohemians who closely imitated Brummell's habits of dress, manner, and style. In that time of political progress, French dandies were celebrated as social revolutionaries who were self-created men possessed of a consciously-designed personality, men whose way of being broke with inflexible tradition that limited the social progress of greater French society; thus, with their elaborate dress and decadent styles of life, the French dandies conveyed their moral superiority to and political contempt for the conformist bourgeoisie.[20]
Regarding the social function of the dandy in a stratified society, like the British writer Carlyle, in Sartor Resartus, the French poet Baudelaire said that dandies have "no profession other than elegance . . . no other [social] 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." Likewise, French intellectuals investigated the sociology of the dandies (flâneurs) who strolled Parisian boulevards; in the essay "On Dandyism and George Brummell" (1845) Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly analysed the personal and social career of Beau Brummell as a man-about-town who arbitrated what was fashionable and what was unfashionable in polite society.[21]
In the late 19th century, dandified bohemianism was characteristic of the artists who were the Symbolist movement in French poetry and literature, wherein the "Truth of Art" included the artist to the work of art.[22]
Regarding the existence and the political and cultural functions of the dandy in a society, in the essay L'Homme révolté (1951), Albert Camus said that:
The dandy creates his own unity by aesthetic means. But it is an aesthetic of negation. To live and die before a mirror: that, according to Baudelaire, was the dandy's slogan. It is indeed a coherent slogan. The dandy is, by occupation, always in opposition [to society]. He can only exist by defiance . . . The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish. Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live [life].[23]
Elizabeth Amann's Dandyism in the Age of Revolution: The Art of the Cut (2015) quotes, "Dandyism has always been a cross-cultural phenomenon"[25]. Male self-fashioning carries socio-political implications beyond its superficiality and opulent external. Through the analysis of clothing, aesthetics, and societal norms, Amann examines how dandyism emerged as a means of asserting identity, power, and autonomy in the midst of revolutionary change. Male self-fashioning, in particular, was wielded as a resistance expression in denial of itself due to the influence of the French Revolution on British discussions of masculinity. British prime minister William Pitt proposed an unusual measure: the Hair Powder Act of 1795, which aimed to levy a tax on from affluent consumers of hair powder to raise money for the war. Critics of the act expressed fear regarding the association between wearing hair powder and "a tendency to produce a famine,” and those who did so would “run the further risque of being knocked on the head” [26]. In August 1975, journalists and new reports complained that "the papers had misled the poor and encouraged them to consider powdered heads their enemies," a “calculated to excite riots.” [27] With the new legislation, the powdered look became a marker of class in English society and a much more exclusive one, polarizing those who used the products and those who did not. Those who feared making class boundaries too visible considered the distinctions to be deep and significant and therefore wished to protect them by making them less evident, by allowing a self-fashioning that created an illusion of mobility in a highly stratified society.
In the early discussion of the tax, the London Packet posed the question, “Is an actor, who in his own private character uniformly appears in a scratch wig, or wears his hair without powder, li- able to pay the tax imposed by the new act, for any of the parts which he is necessitated to dress with powder on the stage?” This seemingly trivial inquiry unveils a profound aspect of the legislation: By paying the tax, citizens were essentially purchasing the right to craft a persona, akin to an actor who took on a stage role. Exaggerated self-fashioning was no longer an oppositional strategy and instead became the prevailing norm. To protest the tax and the war against France was to embrace a new aesthetic of invisibility, wherein individuals favored natural attire and simplicity in order to blend into the social fabric rather than stand out.
The counterpart to the dandy is the quaintrelle, a woman whose life is dedicated to the passionate expression of personal charm and style, to enjoying leisurely pastimes, and the dedicated cultivation of the pleasures of life.
In the 12th century, cointerrels (male) and cointrelles (female) emerged, based upon coint,[28] a word applied to things skillfully made, later indicating a person of beautiful dress and refined speech.[29] By the 18th century, coint became quaint,[30] indicating elegant speech and beauty. Middle English dictionaries note quaintrelle as a beautifully dressed woman (or overly dressed), but do not include the favorable personality elements of grace and charm. The notion of a quaintrelle sharing the major philosophical components of refinement with dandies is a modern development that returns quaintrelles to their historic roots.
Female dandies did overlap with male dandies for a brief period during the early 19th century when dandy had a derisive definition of "fop" or "over-the-top fellow"; the female equivalents were dandyess or dandizette.[29] Charles Dickens, in All the Year Around (1869) comments, "The dandies and dandizettes of 1819–20 must have been a strange race. "Dandizette" was a term applied to the feminine devotees to dress, and their absurdities were fully equal to those of the dandies."[31] In 1819, Charms of Dandyism, in three volumes, was published by Olivia Moreland, Chief of the Female Dandies; most likely one of many pseudonyms used 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". Later, as the word dandy evolved to denote refinement, it became applied solely to men. Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City (2003) notes this evolution in the latter 19th century: ". . . or dandizette, although the term was increasingly reserved for men."
"Yankee Doodle" is a traditional song and nursery rhyme, the early versions of which predate the Seven Years' War and American Revolutionary War. It is often sung patriotically in the United States today. It is the state anthem of Connecticut. Its Roud Folk Song Index number is 4501.
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher from the Scottish Lowlands. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature, and philosophy.
George Bryan "Beau" Brummell was an important figure in Regency England, and for many years he was the arbiter of British men's fashion. At one time, he was a close friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV, but after the two quarrelled and Brummell got into debt, he had to take refuge in France. Eventually, he died shabby and insane in Caen.
A wig is a head covering made from human or animal hair, or a synthetic imitation thereof. The word is short for "periwig". Wigs may be worn to disguise baldness, to alter the wearer's appearance, or as part of certain professional uniforms.
Fop became a pejorative term for a man excessively concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th-century England. Some of the many similar alternative terms are: coxcomb, fribble, popinjay, dandy, fashion-monger, and ninny. Macaroni was another term of the 18th century more specifically concerned with fashion.
White tie, also called full evening dress or a dress suit, is the most formal evening Western dress code. For men, it consists of a black tail coat worn over a white dress shirt with a starched or pique bib, white piqué waistcoat and the white bow tie worn around a standing wing collar. Mid or high-waisted black trousers with galon, a braid of trim consisting of two silk stripes to conceal the outer seams of the trousers, along with court shoes complete the outfit. Orders, decorations and medals may be worn. Acceptable accessories include a black top hat, white gloves, a white scarf, a pocket watch, a white pocket square, and a boutonnière. Women wear full-length ball or evening gowns with evening gloves and, optionally, tiaras, jewellery, and a small handbag.
Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books is an 1831 novel by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, first published as a serial in Fraser's Magazine in November 1833 – August 1834. The novel purports to be a commentary on the thought and early life of a German philosopher called Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, author of a tome entitled Clothes: Their Origin and Influence. Teufelsdröckh's Transcendentalist musings are mulled over by a sceptical English Reviewer who also provides fragmentary biographical material on the philosopher. The work is, in part, a parody of Hegel, and of German Idealism more generally.
A macaroni was a pejorative term used to describe a fashionable fellow of 18th-century Britain. Stereotypically, men in the macaroni subculture dressed, spoke, and behaved in an unusually epicene and androgynous manner.
An afghan is a blanket or shawl, usually knitted or crocheted. It is sometimes also called a "throw" of indeterminate size. Afghans are often used as bedspreads, or as a decoration on the back of couches or chairs.
Fashion in the years 1750–1775 in European countries and the colonial Americas was characterised by greater abundance, elaboration and intricacy in clothing designs, loved by the Rococo artistic trends of the period. The French and English styles of fashion were very different from one another. French style was defined by elaborate court dress, colourful and rich in decoration, worn by such iconic fashion figures as Marie Antoinette.
Fashion in the period 1795–1820 in European and European-influenced countries saw the final triumph of undress or informal styles over the brocades, lace, periwigs and powder of the earlier 18th century. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, no one wanted to appear to be a member of the French aristocracy, and people began using clothing more as a form of individual expression of the true self than as a pure indication of social status. As a result, the shifts that occurred in fashion at the turn of the 19th century granted the opportunity to present new public identities that also provided insights into their private selves. Katherine Aaslestad indicates how "fashion, embodying new social values, emerged as a key site of confrontation between tradition and change."
Fashion in the period 1700–1750 in European and European-influenced countries is characterized by a widening silhouette for both men and women following the tall, narrow look of the 1680s and 90s. This era is defined as late Baroque/Rococo style. The new fashion trends introduced during this era had a greater impact on society, affecting not only royalty and aristocrats, but also middle and even lower classes. Clothing during this time can be characterized by soft pastels, light, airy, and asymmetrical designs, and playful styles. Wigs remained essential for men and women of substance, and were often white; natural hair was powdered to achieve the fashionable look. The costume of the eighteenth century, if lacking in the refinement and grace of earlier times, was distinctly quaint and picturesque.
Edmund Joseph Sullivan (1869–1933), usually known as E. J. Sullivan, was a British book illustrator who worked in a style which merged the British tradition of illustration from the 1860s with aspects of Art Nouveau.
Beau Brummell: This Charming Man is a 2006 BBC Television drama based on the biography of Beau Brummell by Ian Kelly. The title references a 1983 song by The Smiths.
Fashion in the twenty years between 1775 and 1795 in Western culture became simpler and less elaborate. These changes were a result of emerging modern ideals of selfhood, the declining fashionability of highly elaborate Rococo styles, and the widespread embrace of the rationalistic or "classical" ideals of Enlightenment philosophes.
On Dandyism and George Brummell, by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, is a biographic essay about the British dandy Beau Brummell (1778–1840) and about the way of life that is dandyism. In English, the essay "Du dandysme et de George Brummell" has been published under the titles "Of Dandyism and of George Brummell" and "The Anatomy of Dandyism".
Brummell is a 1931 operetta in three acts and five scenes by Reynaldo Hahn to a libretto by Rip and Robert Dieudonné. Its protagonist is the English dandy Beau Brummell (1778-1840), although the storyline is entirely fictional.
Scrope Berdmore Davies (1782–1852), often given incorrectly as Scrope Beardmore Davies, was an English dandy of the Regency period. He is known as a friend of Lord Byron, the dedicatee of Byron's poem Parisina. He is the subject of a 1981 biography.
Georg Bernhard Tennyson was an American scholar. He was emeritus professor of English at UCLA, a longtime editor of the journal Nineteenth-Century Literature, and a prominent scholar of Thomas Carlyle and Owen Barfield.
Thomas Carlyle believed that his time required a new approach to writing:
But finally do you reckon this really a time for Purism of Style; or that Style has much to do with the worth or unworth of a Book? I do not: with whole ragged battalions of Scott's-Novel Scotch, with Irish, German, French and even Newspaper Cockney storming in on us, and the whole structure of our Johnsonian English breaking up from its foundations,—revolution there as visible as anywhere else!
References
1 2 dandy: "One who studies ostentatiously to dress fashionably and elegantly; a fop, an exquisite." (OED).
↑ Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 1989. Archived from the original on 25 June 2006. Retrieved 2 March 2008. dude, n. U.S.A name given in ridicule to a man affecting an exaggerated fastidiousness in dress, speech, and deportment, and very particular about what is aesthetically 'good form'; hence extended to an exquisite, a dandy, 'a swell'.
↑ Cult de soi-même, Charles Baudelaire, "Le Dandy", noted in Susann Schmid, "Byron and Wilde: The Dandy in the Public Sphere" in Julie Hibbard et al. , eds. The Importance of Reinventing Oscar: Versions of Wilde During the Last 100 Years 2002
↑ Le Dandysme en France (1817–1839) Geneva and Paris, 1957.
↑ Baudelaire, Charles. "The Painter in Modern Life", essay about Constantin Guys.
↑ Ribeiro, Aileen. "On Englishness in Dress", essay in The Englishness of English Dress. Christopher Breward, Becky Conekin, and Caroline Cox, Eds., 2002.
↑ Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 1989. Archived from the original on 25 June 2006. Retrieved 2 March 2008. Dandy 1.a. "One who studies, above everything, to dress elegantly and fashionably; a beau, a fop, an exquisite. A 1780 Scots song says: "I've heard my granny crack O' sixty twa' years back. When there were sic a stock of Dandies O; Oh they gaed to Kirk and Fair, Wi' their ribbons round their hair, And their stumpie drugget coats, quite the Dandy O. See: Notes and Queries 8th Ser. IV. 81.
↑ "In Regency England, Brummel's fashionable simplicity constituted, in fact, a criticism of the exuberant French fashions of the eighteenth century" (Schmid 2002:83)
↑ D'Aurevilly, Barbey. "Du dandisme et de George Brummell" (1845) in Oeuvres complètes (1925) pp. 87–92.
↑ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 6018–6019). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
↑ Meinhold, Roman. "The Ideal-Typical Incarnation of Fashion: The Dandy as. . . .", essay in Fashion Myths: A Cultural Critique. Bielefeld, Germany: transcript, 2014. pp. 111–125. books.google.com/books?id=1XWiBQAAQBAJ ISBN9783839424377
↑ Walden, George. Who's a Dandy? — Dandyism and Beau Brummell, Gibson Square, London, 2002. ISBN1903933188. Reviewed in Uncommon People, The Guardian, 12 October 2006.
↑ Meinhold, Roman. "The Ideal-Typical Incarnation of Fashion: The Dandy as. . . .", essay in Fashion Myths: A Cultural Critique. Bielefeld, Germany: transcript, 2014. pp. 111–125. books.google.com/books?id=1XWiBQAAQBAJ ISBN9783839424377
↑ Amann, Elizabeth (2015). Dandyism in the age of Revolution: the art of the cut. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN978-0-226-18725-9.
Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten. 'Rulefollowing in Dandyism: Style as an Overcoming of Rule and Structure' in The Modern Language Review 90, April 1995, pp.285–295.
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. PhD diss., Loyola U of Chicago, 1998.
Prevost, John C., Le Dandysme en France (1817–1839) (Geneva and Paris) 1957.
Nigel RodgersThe Dandy: Peacock or Enigma? (London) 2012
Stanton, Domna. The Aristocrat as Art 1980.
Wharton, Grace and Philip. Wits and Beaux of Society. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1861.
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