An Ideal Dandy

Hugh Grant, that blend of Christopher Robin and cuddly roué is the ideal cinematic Englishman. Take the hesitant stutter and the shyness of his “I […]

Beau Jest

Everyone knows the jests and bon mots of Beau Brummell’s as recounted by Captain Jesse. The “Do you call that thing a coat?” line, and […]

Microbian Dandyism

Perhaps because of our Proustian and Balzacian education, we have been convinced for years that dandyism as we know it from literature and history has […]

Exclusive Member

The 2005 bicentenary of the Pere Lachaise cemetery caused an extraordinary phenomenona worthy of an Edgar Allan Poe tale. The mystery discovered by Parisian keepers […]

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 […]

Jolly Roger

  For his 80th birthday in 2007, Sir Roger Moore received an appropriate present: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Moore attended the […]

Stiff Upper Quip

Dry, dapper and a master of light comedy, David Niven was not only an English gentleman navigating the Hollywood miasma, but a “first-rate personality. A […]

Dazzling Beauty

If Catherine Breillat could be anyone in the world, she’d be the man pictured below. No, not the “dazzling beauty” pictured above, but the guy […]

Tread Lightly

  The merely well dressed man has his Edward Greens and his John Lobbs (from Paris, of course, not London). The shoe fetishist dons his […]

Dressed To Swill

The dressing gown was the perfect camouflage. Luxurious, sensual, and slightly louche, it’s a garment made for activities no more strenuous than arching an eyebrow, […]

Jim Dandy

The members of the opening-night audience for “Manhattan Mary,” Broadway’s most anticipated musical of 1927, was startled at the end of the second act when […]

Bunny Roger

Bunny Roger By Clive Fisher The Independent, 1997 Erstwhile couturier, wit, dandy, landowner, and social ornament, Bunny Roger was what obituary in its obliquer days […]

Sunflower Man

  “Chinese art possess no elements of beauty.” Oscar Wilde offered up that curious opinion on a San Francisco-bound ferry boat to a crowd of […]

Last of the Dapper Politicos

If politics make strange bedfellows, the strangest must be the dandy and the politician. Yes, there is a long tradition of political dandyism from Alcibiades […]

Murphy’s Law

  “The true dandy was not the most foppishly dressed, the most stylish, the most flash-mannered; he was primarily an artist of talent.” — From […]

Dandy of the Year: Sebastian Horsley

When Oscar Wilde arrived in the United States, he said, “I have nothing to declare but my genius.” When Sebastian Horsley arrived, he said, “I […]

Dandy of the Year: Lapo Elkann

He’s young, good-looking and extremely wealthy. He’s fluent in six languages and the very definition of cosmopolitan, having been born in New York, raised in […]

Urbane Stylishness

Philosopher Kuki Shuzo (1888-1941) was the first Japanese scholar to use Western aesthetic theory in the interpretation of his native culture. A colleague of Bergson […]