From “Pelham: Or the Adventures of a Gentleman” By Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1828 1) Do not require your dress so much to fit, as to adorn […]
Month: August 2024
In That Suit You May Pass Anywhere
Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1896 novel Rodney Stone follows the adventures of a young and ambitious boxer as he navigates the world of professional prizefighting in […]
Saint-Loup
First impressions of Robert de Saint-Loup From “Within a Budding Grove” By Marcel Proust, 1919 One afternoon of scorching heat I was in the dining-room […]
Treatise On Elegant Living
Every era has its particular expression of elegance. But while that expression is forever in flux, the principles that govern it are fixed and eternal. […]
The Joker’s Riled
“La chair est triste, helas, et j’ai lu tous les livres.” When I was younger, those lines of Mallarmé used to haunt me. This was back […]
Something Superior To The Visible World
A 19th-century woman wrote herself into the annals of history by saying that the feeling of being perfectly well dressed brings a supernatural calm that […]
The Complete Dandy
From “D’Orsay, or the Complete Dandy” By W. Teignmouth Shore, 1911 Image: detail of Count d’Orsay in the National Portrait Gallery What a delightful fellow […]
A Nero Of Our Time
Cold, elegant and aloof, Boris Lermontov is the “attractive brute” at the center of “The Red Shoes,” the 1948 cinematic masterpiece by Powell & Pressburger. […]
New Regency: 20 Years Of Dandyism.net
When Christian Chensvold, Dandyism.net’s founder and guiding light for the past two decades, asked me to write a post commemorating the site’s twentieth anniversary, I […]
Letters To A Young Dandy
My Dear Palmieri: It is a rare and wonderful gift for a curmudgeon such as myself to receive the praise of youth. It’s nice […]
Social & Literary Dandyism
Social and Literary Dandyism Littell’s Living Age, 1880 Article unsigned Dandies, like saints, are never much beloved by their fellow-creatures. Like saints, they have an […]
Aristocratic By Nature
From “New Notes On Edgar Poe,” 1857 By Charles Baudelaire Decadent literature! Empty words which we often hear fall, with thes onority of a deep […]
I Lock The Door Upon Myself
In 1900 Fernand Khnopff had a house built according to his plans — a house with false windows. Silence and solitude were central themes in the […]