Fine and dandy...

And just what is a dandy I hear you ask? Not to be confused with rakehells and bounders of popular romantic fiction the term 'dandy' originated as a vogue word during the Napoleonic Wars and persisted through to the 20th century. A dandy was always immaculately dressed but their 'image' was more than just clothes, their wit and fine language was refined, they cultivated fashionable hobbies and rejected bourgeois (loosely wealthy classes in capitalist society eg. owners & employers) values. A dandies clothes were always freshly laundered and tailor made to fit perfectly. When composing an outfit effort was made to show as much perfectly starched linen as possible, often in the form of an elaborately knotted cravat. The dandy himself was immaculately bathed and shaved, un-powdered and un-perfumed. Maybe that's why they had to change their snug outfits so often?

The most famous British dandy was the celebrity Beau Brummell (George Byran Brummell, 1778-1840). Part of the prince regents' set it has been written that he once took 5 hours to get dressed and would often change his outfit several times a day. A lot like my 19 year old boarder. In contrast to previous fashions of powdered wigs and loose breeches Brummell introduced snugly tailored dark 'pantaloons', essentially the modern trouser which has been the mainstay of men's wear for the last 2 centuries, and cut his hair short in the Roman fashion now associated with Romantic era poets. In fact Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron) occasionally dressed the part of a dandy and his friend Count d'Orsay (Alfred Guilluame Gabriel d'Orsay) was a great dandy in the 1940's. The french King of Naples, Joachim Murat, was dubbed the 'Dandy King' because of his immaculate image.

The 'Dandy King'

Charles Baudelaire wrote that an aspiring dandy 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". So now I've bored you with these common facts do they sound familiar? Certainly the fashion plates for the 2009 and 2010 winters show a reinvention of the dandy dress (minus the cravat unfortunately) but what of the social component of the dandy image? When I'm sitting on the train trying to read my book and ignore the people crammed together during the 5pm rush I can't help but listen to conversations and there seems to me to be an increasing trend in the appreciation of wit and good language in groups of young individuals. There's a sense that 'good' conversation is the height of enjoyment for the listener and achievement for the speaker. Perhaps this is related to the recent trendiness of reading or the need to express individuality or I've gone mad from over analysing everything. All I know is that my young male ex-boarder used more hair product and devices than me, often taking more than 30 min to 'arrange' it in a loosely tousled fashion which in my opinion looked no different from when he woke up that morning and was known to come home half way through a night out to change his outfit. Maybe it is just a dress fashion and a darned good one ;-)