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This article is about the persons. For other uses, see Dandy (disambiguation).
Sporty Parisian dandies of the 1830s: a tight corset helped one achieve his silhouette. The man on the left wears a frock coat, the man on the right wears a morning coat

A dandy[1] (also known as a beau or gallant[2]) is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self.[3] Historically, especially in late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain, a dandy, who was self-made, often strove to imitate an aristocratic lifestyle despite coming from a middle-class background.

Though previous manifestations, of Alcibiades, and of the petit-maître (Fr. for small master) and the Muscadin have been noted by John C. Prevost,[4] 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". Honoré de Balzac introduced the perfectly worldly and unmoved Henri de Marsay in La fille aux yeux d'or (1835), a part of La Comédie Humaine, who fulfills at first the model of a perfect dandy, until an obsessive love-pursuit unravels him in passionate and murderous jealousy.

Charles Baudelaire, in the later, "metaphysical" phase of dandyism[5] defined the dandy as one who elevates æsthetics to a living religion,[6] 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."

The linkage of clothing with political protest had become a particularly English characteristic during the 18th century.[7] Given these connotations, dandyism can be seen as a political protestation against the rise of levelling 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 paradoxically, the dandy required an audience, as Susann Schmid observed in examining the "successfully marketed lives" of Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron, who exemplify the dandy's roles in the public sphere, both as writers and as personae providing sources of gossip and scandal.[8]

Etymology

The origin of the word is uncertain. Eccentricity, defined as taking characteristics such as dress and appearance to extremes, began to be applied generally to human behavior in the 1770s;[9] similarly, the word dandy first appears in the late 18th century: In the years immediately preceding the American Revolution, the first verse and chorus of "Yankee Doodle" derided the alleged poverty and rough manners of American-citizen colonists, suggesting that whereas a fine horse and gold-braided clothing ("mac[c]aroni") were required to set an American apart from those around him, the average American-citizen colonists means were so meager that ownership of a mere pony and a few feathers for personal ornamentation would qualify one of them as a "dandy" by comparison to and/or in the minds of his even less sophisticated Eurasian compatriots.[10] A slightly later Scottish border ballad, circa 1780,[11] also features the word, but probably without all the contextual aspects of its more recent meaning. The original, full form of 'dandy' may have been jack-a-dandy.[12] 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"; when used in the form of a noun, it refers to a well-groomed and well-dressed man, but often to one who is also self-absorbed.

Beau Brummell and early British dandyism

Caricature of Beau Brummell by Richard Dighton (1805).

The model dandy in British society was George Bryan "Beau" Brummell (1778–1840), in his early days, an undergraduate student at Oriel College, Oxford and later, an associate of the Prince Regent. Brummell was not from an aristocratic background; indeed, his greatness was "based on nothing at all," as J.A. Barbey d'Aurevilly observed in 1845.[13] Ever unpowdered, unperfumed, immaculately bathed and shaved, and dressed in a plain dark blue coat,[14] he was always 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", a man chiefly famous for being famous—in his case, as a laconically witty clothes-horse.[citation needed]

By the time Pitt taxed hair powder in 1795 to help pay for the war against France and to discourage the use of flour (which had recently increased in both rarity and price, owing to bad harvests) in such a frivolous product, 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 led 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 lunatic asylum in Caen, just before age 62.[citation needed]

Men of more notable accomplishments than Beau Brummell also adopted the dandiacal pose: George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron occasionally dressed the part, helping reintroduce the frilled, lace-cuffed and lace-collared "poet shirt". In that spirit, he had his portrait painted in Albanian costume.[citation needed]

Another prominent dandy of the period was Alfred Guillaume Gabriel d'Orsay, the Count d'Orsay, who had been friends with Byron and who moved in the highest social circles of London.

In 1836 Thomas Carlyle wrote:

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...[15]

By the mid-19th century, the English dandy, within the muted palette of male fashion, exhibited minute refinements -- "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."[16]

Dandyism in France

Joachim Murat, the French King of Naples, was dubbed the "Dandy King" because of his flawless appearance.[17]

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 19th century, this fancy-dress bohemianism was a major influence on the Symbolist movement in French literature.[citation needed]

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.[18]

Later dandyism

Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921) portrait by Giovanni Boldini

The literary dandy is a familiar figure in the writings, and sometimes the self-presentation, of Oscar Wilde, H.H. Munro (Clovis and Reginald), P.G. Wodehouse (Bertie Wooster) and Ronald Firbank, writers linked by their subversive air.

The poets Algernon Charles Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, the American artist James McNeill Whistler, the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Max Beerbohm were dandies of the Belle Époque, 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. Wilde wrote that, "One should either be a work of Art, or wear a work of Art."

At the end of the 19th century, American dandies were called dudes. Evander Berry Wall was nicknamed the "King of the Dudes".

George Walden, in the essay Who's a Dandy?, identifies Noël Coward, Andy Warhol, and Quentin Crisp as modern dandies.[18] The character Psmith in the novels of P. G. Wodehouse is regarded to be a dandy, both physically and intellectually. Agatha Christie's Poirot is said to be a dandy.

The artist Sebastian Horsley described himself as a "dandy in the underworld" in his eponymous autobiography.[19]

In Japan, dandyism became a fashion subculture during the late 1990s. Presently,[when?] the term is also used to refer to an attractive but older, well-dressed man, usually a man in his late 40s or 50s[citation needed].

In Spain during the early 19th century a curious phenomena developed linked to the idea of dandysm. While in England and France individuals from the middle classes adopted aristocratic manners, the Spanish aristocracy adopted the fashions of the lower classes, called majos. They were characterized by their elaborate outfits and sense of style as opposed to the modern frenchified "afrancesados", as for their cheeky arrogant attitude. Some famous dandies in later times were amongst other the Duke of Osuna, Mariano Tellez-Girón, artist Salvador Dalí and poet Luís Cernuda.

Female dandies

An 1819 Dandizette

The female counterpart is a quaintrelle.[citation needed] In the 12th century, cointerrels (male) and cointrelles (female) emerged, based upon coint,[20] indicating a person of beautiful dress and refined speech. By the 18th century, coint became quaint,[21] 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, one which 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. Charles Dickens, in All the Year Around (1869) comments, "The dandies and dandizettes of 1819-1820 must have been a strange race. Dandizette was a term applied to feminine devotees to dress and their absurdities were fully equal to those of the 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". 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."

Later thought

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. He can only exist by defiance. Up to now, man derived his coherence from the Creator. But from the moment that he consecrates his rupture from Him, he finds himself delivered over to the fleeting moment, to the passing days, and to wasted sensibility. Therefore he must take himself in hand. The dandy rallies his forces and creates a unity for himself by the very violence of his refusal. Profligate, like all people without a rule of life, he is only coherent as an actor. But an actor implies a public; the dandy can only play a part by setting himself up in opposition. He can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expression of others' faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it's true, since human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated, spurred on by provocation. 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 it.

Jean Baudrillard said that dandyism is "an aesthetic form of nihilism".[22]

Carlos Espartaco said about the American philosopher and poet Eduardo Sanguinetti:

"Only the dandy, last heir of the stoic tentative, has imposed himself in the world of appearance as a thing and has evaded fashion in the name of a "mode" that would be inseparable of him. Actually, it is necessary to summon the void in itself, to conqueror the cool way that qualifies the dandy, which is "thosusand of kilometers farther from inmediate sensations". And for Eduardo Sanguinetti this means, in terms of the multiple strategics he will use in the passages from "anti-fashion" to "look" a radical self-empting that emancipates from time, but that does not reject the effort that has to do to register the emerging novelty. Obtaining this space resembles a landscape, where, in accordance with Baudelaire "carries Hercules upon his shoulders".[23]

Famous dandies

Fictional dandies

By author

By show

By name

See also

References

  1. ^ "One who studies ostentatiously to dress fashionably and elegantly; a fop, an exquisite." (OED).
  2. ^ Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 1989. 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 æsthetically 'good form'; hence, extended to an exquisite, a dandy, 'a swell'.
  3. ^ 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
  4. ^ Le Dandysme en France (1817-1839) (Geneva and Paris) 1957.
  5. ^ See Prevost 1957.
  6. ^ Baudelaire, in his essay about painter Constantin Guys, "The Painter of Modern Life".
  7. ^ Aileen Ribeiro, "On Englishness in dress" in The Englishness of English Dress, Christopher Breward, Becky Conekin and Caroline Cox, ed., 2002.
  8. ^ Schmid 2002.
  9. ^ Ribeiro 2002:20, under the subheading "Eccentricity, Extremes, and Affectation".
  10. ^ "Yankee Doodle"; Maccaroni (fashion).
  11. ^ Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 1989. dandy 1.a. One who studies above everything to dress elegantly and fashionably; a beau, fop, 'exquisite'. c1780 Sc. Song (see N. & Q. 8th Ser. IV. 81), 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.
  12. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911]
  13. ^ Barbey d'Aurevilly, "Du dandisme et de George Brummell," (published 1845, collected in Oeuvres complètes 1925:87-92).
  14. ^ "In Regency England, Brummel's fashionable simplicity constituted in fact a criticism of the exuberant French fashions of the eighteenth century" (Schmid 2002:83),
  15. ^ Thomas Carlyle, "The Dandiacal Body", in Sartor Resartus
  16. ^ Ribeira 2002:21.
  17. ^ 10,000 Famous Freemasons from K to Z
  18. ^ a b George Walden, Who's a Dandy? – Dandyism and Beau Brummell, Gibson Square, London, 2002. ISBN 1903933188. Reviewed by Frances Wilson in Uncommon People, The Guardian, 12 October 2006.
  19. ^ Beautiful and damned, New Statesman, 16 October 2006
  20. ^ Old English Dictionary
  21. ^ Dictionary of Early English
  22. ^ http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/simulacra-and-simulations-xviii-on-nihilism/
  23. ^ Espartaco Carlos 1989 "Eduardo Sanguinetti: The Experience of Limits" pag.98, 99 (Ediciones de Arte Gaglianone, first published 1989) ISBN 950-9004-98-7

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.
  • Espartaco Carlos, Eduardo Sanguinetti: The Experience of Limits,(Ediciones de Arte Gaglianone, first published 1989) ISBN 950-9004-98-7.
  • 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 Aristocrat as Art 1980.
  • Wharton, Grace and Philip. Wits and Beaux of Society. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1861.
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