Dandy
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
, a dandy, who was self-made, often strove to imitate an aristocratic
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
lifestyle despite coming from a middle-class background.
Though previous manifestations, of Alcibiades
Alcibiades
Alcibiades, son of Clinias, from the deme of Scambonidae , was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War...
, and of the petit-maître and the muscadin have been noted by John C. Prevost, the modern practice of dandyism first appeared in the revolutionary 1790s, both in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. The dandy cultivated skeptical reserve, yet to such extremes that the novelist George Meredith
George Meredith
George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...
, himself no dandy, once defined "cynicism" as "intellectual dandyism"; nevertheless, the Scarlet Pimpernel
Scarlet pimpernel
Scarlet pimpernel is a low-growing annual plant found in Europe, Asia and North America...
is one of the great dandies of literature. Some took a more benign view; Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
in his book Sartor Resartus
Sartor Resartus
Thomas Carlyle's major work, Sartor Resartus , first published as a serial in 1833-34, purported 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" , but was actually a poioumenon...
, wrote that a dandy was no more than "a clothes-wearing man". Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
introduced the perfectly worldly and unmoved Henri de Marsay in La fille aux yeux d'or (1835), a part of La Comédie Humaine
La Comédie humaine
La Comédie humaine is the title of Honoré de Balzac's multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy .-Overview:...
, who fulfills at first the model of a perfect dandy, until an obsessive love-pursuit unravels him in passionate and murderous jealousy.
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, in the later, "metaphysical" phase of dandyism defined the dandy as one who elevates æsthetics to a living religion, 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
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
" 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. 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
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
and Lord Byron, who exemplify the dandy's roles in the public sphere, both as writers and as personae providing sources of gossip
Gossip
Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others, It is one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and variations into the information transmitted...
and scandal
Scandal
A scandal is a widely publicized allegation or set of allegations that damages the reputation of an institution, individual or creed...
.
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; 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 DoodleYankee Doodle
"Yankee Doodle" is a well-known Anglo-American song, the origin of which dates back to the Seven Years' War. It is often sung patriotically in the United States today and is the state anthem of Connecticut...
" derided the alleged poverty and rough manners of American-born colonists, suggesting that whereas a fine horse and gold-braided clothing ("mac[c]aroni") were required to set a European apart from those around him, the average American's 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 compatriots. A slightly later Scottish border ballad
Border ballad
The English/Scottish border has a long and bloody history of conquest and reconquest, raid and counter-raid . It also has a stellar tradition of balladry, such that a whole group of songs exists that are often called "border ballads", because they were collected in that region.Border ballads, like...
, circa 1780, 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. It was a vogue word during the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
. In that contemporary slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
, a "dandy" was differentiated from a "fop
Fop
Fop became a pejorative term for a foolish man over-concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th century England. Some of the very many similar alternative terms are: "coxcomb", fribble, "popinjay" , fashion-monger, and "ninny"...
" 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
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
society was George Bryan "Beau" Brummell
Beau Brummell
Beau Brummell, born as George Bryan Brummell , was the arbiter of men's fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV...
(1778–1840), in his early days, an undergraduate student at Oriel College, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and later, an associate of the Prince Regent
George IV of the United Kingdom
George IV was the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and also of Hanover from the death of his father, George III, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later...
. Brummell was not from an aristocratic background; indeed, his greatness was "based on nothing at all," as J.A. Barbey d'Aurevilly
Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly was a French novelist and short story writer. He specialised in mystery tales that explored hidden motivation and hinted at evil without being explicitly concerned with anything supernatural...
observed in 1845. Ever unpowdered, unperfumed, immaculately bathed and shaved, and dressed in a plain dark blue coat, he was always perfectly brushed, perfectly fitted, showing much perfectly starched linen, all freshly laundered, and composed with an elaborately knotted cravat
Cravat
The cravat is a neckband, the forerunner of the modern tailored necktie and bow tie, originating from 17th-century Croatia.From the end of the 16th century, the term band applied to any long-strip neckcloth that was not a ruff...
. From the mid 1790s, Beau Brummell was the early incarnation of "the celebrity
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
", a man chiefly famous for being famous—in his case, as a laconically witty clothes-horse.
By the time Pitt
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
taxed hair powder
Duty on Hair Powder Act 1795
Duty on Hair Powder Act 1795 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain levying a tax on hair powder. It was repealed in 1869....
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
Breeches
Breeches are an item of clothing covering the body from the waist down, with separate coverings for each leg, usually stopping just below the knee, though in some cases reaching to the ankles...
to snugly tailored dark "pantaloon
Pantaloon
Pantaloon or Pantaloons may refer to:*Pantaloons, a style of trousers*Pantaloon Retail India, a large retailer in India*The Pantaloons, an English touring theatre company*Pantaloon, a character in the Harlequinade-See also:...
s," 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
Caen
Caen is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. It is located inland from the English Channel....
, just before age 62.
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
occasionally dressed the part, helping reintroduce the frilled, lace-cuffed and lace-collared "poet shirt
Poet shirt
A poet shirt is a type of shirt made as a loose-fitting blouse with full bishop sleeves, usually decorated with large frills on the front and on the cuffs. Typically, it has a laced-up V-neck opening, designed to pull over the head, but can have a full-length opening fastened by buttons...
". 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 who moved in the highest social circles of London.
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."
Dandyism in France
The beginnings of dandyism in France were bound up with the politics of the French revolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
; 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
Sans-culottes
In the French Revolution, the sans-culottes were the radical militants of the lower classes, typically urban laborers. Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, they made up the bulk of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars...
.
During his heyday, Beau Brummell
Beau Brummell
Beau Brummell, born as George Bryan Brummell , was the arbiter of men's fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV...
's dictat on both fashion and etiquette reigned supreme. His habits of dress and fashion were much imitated, especially in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where, in a curious development, they became the rage, especially in bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
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
Decadence
Decadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society . Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence"...
styles of life, French bohemian dandies sought to convey contempt
Contempt
Contempt is an intensely negative emotion regarding a person or group of people as inferior, base, or worthless—it is similar to scorn. It is also used when people are being sarcastic. Contempt is also defined as the state of being despised or dishonored; disgrace, and an open disrespect or willful...
for and superiority to bourgeois society. In the latter 19th century, this fancy-dress bohemianism was a major influence on the Symbolist movement
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
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 boulevard
Boulevard
A Boulevard is type of road, usually a wide, multi-lane arterial thoroughfare, divided with a median down the centre, and roadways along each side designed as slow travel and parking lanes and for bicycle and pedestrian usage, often with an above-average quality of landscaping and scenery...
s of Paris. Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly was a French novelist and short story writer. He specialised in mystery tales that explored hidden motivation and hinted at evil without being explicitly concerned with anything supernatural...
wrote The Anatomy of Dandyism, an essay devoted, in great measure, to examining the career of Beau Brummell.
Later dandyism
The literary dandy is a familiar figure in the writings, and sometimes the self-presentation, of Oscar WildeOscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, H.H. Munro
Saki
Hector Hugh Munro , better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy...
(Clovis and Reginald), P.G. Wodehouse (Bertie Wooster
Bertie Wooster
Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. An English gentleman, one of the "idle rich" and a member of the Drones Club, he appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose genius manages to extricate Bertie or one of...
) and Ronald Firbank
Ronald Firbank
Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was a British novelist.-Biography:Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907...
, writers linked by their subversive air.
The poets Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, Walter Pater
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...
, the American artist James McNeill Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...
, the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, Joris-Karl Huysmans
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...
, and Max Beerbohm
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
were dandies of the Belle Époque
Belle Époque
The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque was a period in European social history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I. Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic and the German Empire, it was a period characterised by optimism and new technological and medical...
, as was Robert de Montesquiou
Robert de Montesquiou
Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac , was a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, art collector and dandy....
— Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
's inspiration for the Baron de Charlus. In Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Gabriele d'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio or d'Annunzio was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, and dramatist...
and Carlo Bugatti
Carlo Bugatti
Carlo Bugatti was a notable decorator, architect , designer and manufacturer of Art Nouveau furniture, models of jewelry, musical instruments.- Biography :Son of Giovanni Luigi Bugatti, a specialist on internal decorations, Carlo studied at the Brera Academy...
exemplified the artistic bohemian dandyism of the fin de siecle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
.
At the end of the 19th century, American dandies were called dude
Dude
A dude is an individual, typically male. The female equivalent, which is used less often, is "dudette" or "dudess". However, "dude" has evolved to become more unisex to encompass all genders, and this was true even in the 1950s....
s. Evander Berry Wall was nicknamed the "King of the Dudes".
George Walden
George Walden
George Gordon Harvey Walden is a British journalist and a former Conservative Party Member of Parliament who served as the Minister for Higher Education from 1985-87....
, in the essay Who's a Dandy?, identifies Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, and Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp , was an English writer and raconteur. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant.- Early life :...
as modern dandies. The character Psmith
Psmith
Rupert Psmith is a recurring fictional character in several novels by British comic writer P. G...
in the novels of P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
is regarded to be a dandy, both physically and intellectually; Bertie Wooster
Bertie Wooster
Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. An English gentleman, one of the "idle rich" and a member of the Drones Club, he appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose genius manages to extricate Bertie or one of...
, narrator of Wodehouse's Jeeves
Jeeves
Reginald Jeeves is a fictional character in the short stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse, being the valet of Bertie Wooster . Created in 1915, Jeeves would continue to appear in Wodehouse's works until his final, completed, novel Aunts Aren't Gentlemen in 1974, making him Wodehouse's most famous...
novels, does his most to be a dandy, only to have Jeeves undermine all his plans to this end. Agatha Christie's Poirot is said to be a dandy.
The artist Sebastian Horsley
Sebastian Horsley
Sebastian Horsley was a London artist best known for having undergone a voluntary crucifixion. Horsley's writing often revolved around his dysfunctional family, his drug addictions, sex, and his reliance on prostitutes.-Background:Horsley was born in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire...
described himself as a "dandy in the underworld" in his eponymous autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
.
In Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, dandyism became a fashion subculture during the late 1990s. Presently, the term is also used to refer to an attractive but older, well-dressed man, usually a man in his late 40s or 50s.
Female dandies
The female counterpart is a quaintrelleQuaintrelle
A quaintrelle is a woman who emphasizes a life of passion expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and cultivation of life’s pleasures. Quaintrelles are not female dandies; rather, they share the same philosophical underpinnings of dandies, developed within feminine nature and...
. In the 12th century, cointerrels (male) and cointrelles (female) emerged, based upon coint, indicating a person of beautiful dress and refined speech. By the 18th century, coint became quaint, 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."
Quotations
Fictional dandies
- Barney StinsonBarney StinsonBarnabas "Barney" Stinson is a fictional character created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas for the CBS television series How I Met Your Mother, portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris. The character has been extremely well received by critics and has been credited for much of the show's success...
- Various characters from the works of Oscar Wilde including Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian GrayDorian GrayDorian Gray is the main character of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.It may also refer to:* Dorian Gray , an Italian film starring Helmut Berger...
, Lord Goring, Lord Illingworth and Algernon. - Hercule PoirotHercule PoirotHercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
- Waldo Lydecker
- Shelby Carpenter
- Addison DeWitt
- Boris Lermentov
- Anton Ego
- Hans LandaHans LandaColonel Hans Landa is the primary antagonist of the 2009 Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds. He is portrayed by Austrian actor Christoph Waltz.- Character :...
- Lucius Malfoy
- Gilderoy Lockhart
- Gaius BaltarGaius BaltarGaius Baltar is a fictional character in the TV series Battlestar Galactica played by James Callis, a reimagining of Count Baltar from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica series...
- VegaVega (Street Fighter)Vega is a fictional character from the Street Fighter fighting game series. Vega is a masked, claw-wielding warrior from Spain who uses a personal fighting style combining Japanese Ninjutsu and Bullfighting, earning him the nickname the "Spanish Ninja".Vega first appears in the original Street...
- Zarbon
- Professor Ratigan
- Skulduggery PleasantSkulduggery PleasantSkulduggery Pleasant is the debut novel of Irish playwright Derek Landy, published in 2007. It is the first of the Skulduggery Pleasant novels...
- Eugene OneginEugene OneginEugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin.It is a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes . It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832...
- Erik and Raoul from The Phantom of the OperaThe Phantom of the OperaLe Fantôme de l'Opéra is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialisation in "Le Gaulois" from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910...
- Count DraculaCount DraculaCount Dracula is a fictional character, the titular antagonist of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula and archetypal vampire. Some aspects of his character have been inspired by the 15th century Romanian general and Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler...
- Carlton Banks
- Count Fosco from The Woman in WhiteThe Woman in White (musical)The Woman in White is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Zippel with a book by Charlotte Jones, based on the novel The Woman in White written by Wilkie Collins...
- Rotti, Luigi and Pavi Largo from Repo! The Genetic OperaRepo! The Genetic OperaRepo! The Genetic Opera is a 2008 horror-rock opera musical film directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. The film is based on a play written and composed by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich....
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See also
- Bourgeois personality
- FlâneurFlâneurThe term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks...
- FopFopFop became a pejorative term for a foolish man over-concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th century England. Some of the very many similar alternative terms are: "coxcomb", fribble, "popinjay" , fashion-monger, and "ninny"...
- IncroyablesIncroyablesThe Incroyables and their female counterparts, the Merveilleuses , were members of a fashionable aristocratic subculture of the Directory period...
- MacaroniMacaroni (fashion)A macaroni in mid-18th century England, was a fashionable fellow who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected and epicene manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who "exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion" in terms of clothes, fastidious eating and gambling...
- MetrosexualMetrosexualMetrosexual is a neologism derived from metropolitan and heterosexual coined in 1994 describing a man who spends a lot of time and money on shopping for his appearance...
- PopinjayPopinjayPopinjay may refer to:* Old-fashioned term for a parrot * A dandy or foppish person* Popinjay , a shooting sport that can be performed with either rifles or archery equipment...
- Swenkas
- ToffToffIn British English slang, a toff is a mildly derogatory term for someone with an aristocratic background or belonging to the landed gentry, particularly someone who exudes an air of superiority...
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 LyttonEdward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonEdward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC , was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune...
. Pelham or the Adventures of a Gentleman. Edited by Jerome McGannJerome McGannJerome McGann is a textual scholar whose work focuses on the history of literature and culture from the late eighteenth-century to the present.-Career:Educated at Le Moyne College , Syracuse University Jerome McGann (born July 22, 1937) is a textual scholar whose work focuses on the history of...
. 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.
External links
- "Bohemianism and Counter-Culture": The Dandy
- The Flâneur Blog: 'modern hypertext, fin de siècle flair'
- Il Dandy (in Italian)
- Dandyism.net
- "The Dandy"
- Dandies and Dandies by Max BeerbohmMax BeerbohmSir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
- "Duchamp is Dandy" by Michael Beyer
- Shubow, Justin. "The Prince and the Dandy": a review of Nicholas Antongiavanni's The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style. The Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2006.
- Walter Thornbury, Dandysme.eu "London Parks: IV. Hyde Park", Belgravia: A London Magazine 1868