“Style is the dress of thought.” — Lord Chesterfield “A dandy does nothing. Can you imagine a dandy addressing the common herd except to make […]
Month: April 2024
The Canon
This list of canonical texts has not been updated since the belle epoque of Dandyism.net circa 2006, but perhaps it will be someday. Principal Texts […]
Blasé In The Face of Death
In literature, dandyish characters occasionally find cause to duel. Sword in hand, Mikhail Lermontov’s dandyish Byronic hero Pechorin fights a duel on a cliff’s […]
Beerbohm’s “Dandies & Dandies,” 1896
Dandies and Dandies By Max Beerbohm, 1896 Image: detail of a portrait by William Rothenstein, via Merton College How very delightful Grego’s drawings are! For […]
The Philosophy Of Style
In 1988 I graduated high school and took off on my first solo road trip, and the adventure onto which I embarked was a quest […]
Symphony In Spite
Being accosted by a fellow American in London put Gilded Age painter and dandy James Abbot McNeill Whistler into a caustic funk. When the uppity […]
The Eccentric Mr. Brummell
Beau Brummell From “Eccentric Personages,” 1864 By W. Russell It is a solemn truth that every death-bed is the final scene of a great tragedy, […]
The Vice Of High Civilization
Beau Brummell From “Wits and Beaux of Society” By Grace and Philip Wharton, 1861 It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high […]
Dandies By Holbrook Jackson, 1914
In the history of dandyism, four works hold pride of place. They are, in chronological order, Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Du dandysme et de George Brummell, Baudelaire’s The […]