Dandyism.net founder and erstwhile editor-in-chief, Christian “Chenners” Chensvold has cracked the code that lies at the four-point crossroads of contemporary dandyism, trad, preppy and Ivy League style—in Japan. He was recently profiled in the Japanese magazine, Free & Easy.In 2008, Chensvold founded Ivy-Style.com, a website devoted to the Ivy League look, its history and its place in American—and, indeed, international—culture. Two years ago, Chensvold pulled up his California stakes and moved his operation to New York, to be nearer the epicenters of publishing, culture and style. There he met classic men’s style greats like G. Bruce Boyer and Richard Press. And Ivy-Style.com thrived. Recently, he was appointed an editorship at the venerable New York high society magazine, Quest.

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Michael Mattis, who has previously written about Sebastian Horsley for Dandyism.net, offers this remembrance.

Dealing with death is always a hard thing. Dealing with the death of someone you have written about is harder still — especially when what you have written about the deceased is not all that nice.

Frequent readers of Dandyism.net will be well within their rights to expect us to slam Sebastian Horsley even in death. But they will be disappointed. For one thing, it does not fall within the purview of a gentleman to speak ill of the dead. What follows is, rather, a grudging appreciation.

First, the facts: According to news reports, the body of Sebastian Horsley, 47 —artist, writer entrepreneur and showman — was found at about 11:00 A.M. GMT on Thursday, June 17, in his small apartment in Soho, London, by one of his lady friends. He had apparently died of an overdose of heroin.

A few evenings before, Horsley had seen the play about his recalcitrant life, based on his memoir, “Dandy in the Underworld.” The play was written by Tim Fountain. It was to be made into a film, produced by his friend, the actor, writer and director Stephen Fry of “Wilde” and “Jeeves” fame.

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In the spring of 1934, a gentleman with a neatly trimmed mustache casts an eye in the direction of the door to an office waiting room, temporarily distracting him from the copy of Esquire he’s just picked up. Is he waiting for a stockbroker? A dentist? A divorce lawyer?

We can tell he’s a man of means and sophistication from his outfit. He’s sporting a lightweight double-breasted suit in a strong check pattern. His blue shirt has a starched white collar and cuffs, and his Guards tie is finished with a four-in-hand knot. His blue pocket square is a few shades paler than his shirt, and matches his socks. His shoes are brown cap-toe balmorals. A gray homburg and rattan cane have been casually placed on an adjoining chair.

Wearing a checked suit in town is something nearly unheard of, but this man pulls it off smashingly. We know he’s confident in his clothes and his world—because the world he inhabits is the creation of an artist who signs himself L. Fellows. And you can be sure that in the months after this illustration appeared, far more checked double-breasted suits were seen on city sidewalks.

If you’ve ever cracked open an old Apparel Arts magazine or vintage Esquire from the ’30s to the ’50s, you’ve seen the distinctive fashion art of Laurence Fellows. But who was this Fellows fellow, anyway?

Fellows was born in Ardmore, Pennsylvania in 1885. He was trained in illustration at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, and honed his trademark “continental” style studying in England and France. But the real story begins when he returned to the States in the early 1910s and burst on the scene as an eager and talented young artist.

Fellows found work contributing to satirical magazines like Life and Leslie’s, and his European-influenced style was fresh and new, reflecting the sleekness and stylization that led to Art Deco. His work was so fresh, in fact, that he found many of his better-known contemporaries, including John Held, Jr. and Ralph Barton, were adapting his stylistic elements for their own use.

Fellows’ style during this period was very mannered and graphic, with thin black outlines enclosing flat expanses of tone and compositions that emphasized graphic weight and balance over fussy illustrative detail. His bread and butter throughout the 1920s was his work for the Kelly-Springfield Tire company. He brought an idea to the Kelly advertising manager for a series of magazine ads featuring “smart cars and smart types of people.” It was the beginning of an assignment that lasted for nearly a decade. The ads are still smart and fashionable today (and becoming collectible, by the way). (more…)

“The Passionate Spectator” columnist Robert Sacheli previously delivered a lengthy appreciation on Fred Astaire. Here, inspired by a new biography on the style icon, he takes a curtain call.

Despite the best intentions of our Founding Fathers, Americans have long been crazy for aristocrats — particularly when it comes to emulating their style. In the 1930s, fashionable men looked to a pair of princes for their cues. One, the Prince of Wales, aka the Duke of Windsor, was a bona fide blueblood, and the influence of his Fair Isle sweaters, midnight-blue dinner jackets, and country-house suits was reflected in the gentlemanly swank of Esquire’s fashion illustrations and in the haberdasheries that catered to the well heeled.

When he foxtrotted off with that divorcée from Baltimore, the dapper Prince abdicated more than an imperial throne. He passed the title of ranking monarch of male fashion to a royal from another powerful, if slightly more mythical, land: Hollywood. Fred Astaire’s reign would prove to be a long one, and his enduring imprint on American style is a legacy as remarkable as his films.

While most of us have happily been content to sit back and watch the man dance, Astaire has long been a magnet for cultural historians, and Joseph Epstein, former editor of The American Scholar, stepped up for his turn on the floor last year with his brief biography, “Fred Astaire” (Yale University Press). The book wasn’t exactly rapturously received (the New York Observer pronounced it “intellectual slumming” and “priggish”), and an extended excerpt in the Hudson Review shows that the carping is justified.

In it, Epstein comes off as alternately snarky, sour, and worst, clueless about musicals — as expected for a highbrow whose works include a volume called “Snobbery.” He’s also not been done any favors by his copy editor. Among other gaffes, he manages to misspell the name of one of Fred’s frequent co-stars, Helen Broderick, and refer to Van Nest Polglase, RKO’s master of the 1930s Big White Set, as an exemplar of Art Nouveau and mangle his name as well. Epstein’s biggest head-scratcher, though, is his assertion that for all the pure joy that Astaire radiated to generations of audiences, he falls short of being a genius. Instead he’s an undeniably talented, perfection-obsessed, but basically dull fellow who can somehow dance up a storm. As Miss Broderick might dryly retort with an appropriate eye roll, “Oh, yeah?” (more…)

“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 reporters anxious to record his first impression of the city, which at the time supported one of largest communities of Chinese outside the so-called Celestial Empire. Wilde had been in the United States since January, lecturing the colonials on interior decoration, art, design, and an obscure subject he called “The English Renaissance,” ahead of the Gilbert and Sullivan light opera, “Patience.” By this sunny morning in March, 1882, the Irish poet and aesthete had wended his way across the continent to “the Occidental uttermost of American civilization,” making a sensation in big cities and mining camps alike along the way.

Wilde had been averse to things Chinese since boyhood, when he heard a Chinese “fiddle” at an exhibition in Paris. “I… could discern no music in it,” he told the reporters.

While Wilde had seen “much that was admirable” in the arts of Japan, whose blue vases and delicately painted fans were all the rage of the Aesthetic Movement back in London, he found in Chinese art that only “the horrible and grotesque” appeared “to be standards of perfection.”

Wilde had ventured his comments after asking a reporter to point out where the city’s Chinese settlement lay on the hilly grid of streets then visible from San Francisco Bay. He had tasted, indeed drunk deeply, the exotic flavor of frontier life in the American West. Now he was considering going further. Behind the slip of land upon which rested the roaring boomtown-cum-metropolis of San Francisco lay the Pacific. And beyond that, Asia. Perhaps he would visit Japan, home to those charming vases and airy prints that he so admired. (more…)

After a long interruption, Dandyism.net presents the final installment of Robert Sacheli’s article on Gerald Murphy. For convenience’s sake (and to refresh your memory), we have combined all three parts into this one post. 

Fresh from his assiduous assessment of Lucius Beebe, Sacheli seeks to rescue the reputation of another forgotten 20th-century American dandy for whom life itself was the greatest work of art.

 * * *

Murphy’s Law
By Robert Sacheli

“The true dandy was not the most foppishly dressed, the most stylish, the most flash-mannered; he was primarily an artist of talent.” — From a biography of Count D’Orsay, part of Gerald Murphy’s collection of quotes.

If any American dandy in Jazz-Age Paris could look at an automobile part and think “I could wear that,” it was Gerald Murphy.

Photographer Man Ray captured Murphy and his wife, Sara, arrayed for the Comte Étienne de Beaumont’s 1924 Automotive Ball, one of string of fetes that made the nobleman’s name synonymous with up-to-the minute, headline-grabbing party giving.

Here is Sara, bizarre but chic in what looks like a foil dress and oversized driving goggles, accented by the strings of pearls that were her trademark. Gerald, also in goggles, wears tights, gauntlets, and a breastplate into which he has been welded. A fanciful, ziggurat-shaped helmet towers on his head, half metallic wedding cake and half Constructivist chimney.

One element lifts the ensemble from witty party get-up to something approaching art: the side-view mirror attached to his left shoulder. With it, Murphy simultaneously embodies the glamour and power of both master and machine, linking a chivalric nobility to speeding promise of modern life.

That mirror also reflects what made Murphy’s dandyism so potent: his life-long ability to transform the everyday into the extraordinary though an alchemy of imagination, energy, and an innate sense of style. But unlike other dandies over whom history exerted its nostalgic sway, Gerald Murphy’s personal and aesthetic visions were always firmly fixed on the future.

For Gerald and Sara, that future first unfolded in a procession of charmed years whose keynote was a unique kind of grace. Rooted in their love and manifested in their gifts for friendship and for living, it was a grace that nourished some of the most innovative talents of the early 20th century. In the years when their own future darkened, it was a grace that sustained them through the cruelest of losses. (more…)

By Stewart Gibson

“Nothing dates so quickly as the apt comment.” So wrote Osbert Lancaster, ruefully reflecting on the inevitable eclipse of his reputation as one of the leading cartoonists, wits and dandies of his day.

Over a period of almost 40 years, Osbert Lancaster became a household name in Britain thanks to his introduction (with some inspiration from the French) of the newspaper “pocket cartoon.” For four decades readers would avidly seek out Lancaster’s contribution to the front page of the Daily Express prior to giving any consideration to the headlines.

The year 2008 marked the centenary of Lancaster’s birth, and in celebration a new book and exhibition are shining a fresh light on that once glittering reputation, providing illuminating insights into the world view of a man who brought the beady eye of an Edwardian dandy to bear on the follies and foibles of the mid-20th century.

In a superb earlier article for Dandyism.net, Michael Mattis covered much of the life and personal style of this “modern major minor dandy.” So here we must focus upon the work and its relation to the nature of its creator, as surveyed in the recently published book by James Knox, “Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster.”

Born to a wealthy family, Lancaster enjoyed a comfortable upbringing. He showed a natural talent for drawing from an early age and his sojourn at Charterhouse School fortuitously placed him at a institution which had an unusually strong tradition of producing outstanding caricaturists and illustrators, among them William Makepeace Thackeray, John Leech and Lancaster’s direct precursor and hero, the “incomparable” Max Beerbohm.

As a cartoonist, boulevardier and “connoisseur of social distinctions,” Lancaster’s use of longer captions revised the tradition of 19th-century Punch cartoons, in addition to following the example of Beerbohm. Lancaster’s obvious nostalgia for an earlier epoch was reflected in his wry observations on the shifting social mores of the 1950s-70s, most usually as seen through the eyes of his greatest comic creation: Maudie, Countess of Littlehampton. Maudie, and her fatalistic and fogeyish husband Willie, were as well known in their day as any society couple could possibly be. (more…)

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 to William Pitt, Benjamin Disraeli, Sir Samuel Hoare and Anthony Eden in Britain, and the young Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Walker, and former Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in the United States.

But we wonder if this tradition can withstand scrutiny. Disraeli became a successful politician only after he put his green velvet trousers, canary-colored waistcoat and lace shirts in mothballs. Walker, on the other hand, remained a dandy, but his casual approach to governing eventually forced him out of office.

On a more profound level, how can one square the politician’s naked ambition for power and the need, in modern democracies, to cater to the masses with the dandy’s nonchalant superiority?

One man, though, who has been a successful politician for decades and whose style we’ve always admired is San Francisco’s Willie Brown.

Thirteen years after he resigned as Speaker of the California State Assembly — an office he held for an unprecedented 15 years — and more than four years after his tenure as San Francisco’s mayor ended, Willie Brown remains one of the most powerful men in California politics. He is also one of the world’s best dressed men.

A Texas native, Brown came west, arrived in San Francisco in 1951, age 17. He was met at the station by a dapper uncle, he relates in his new memoir, “Basic Brown: My Life and Our Times,” who took one look at the country-dressed youngster and immediately took him shopping. Brown’s been a clothes-wearing man ever since.

Brown’s politics, like those of his predecessors is built on “juice” — that most dandyish form of soft power that works entirely through personality, influence and connections and operates at the highest levels of society. And Brown is nothing if not a social butterfly. Though now in his 70s, rare is the evening when he doesn’t have two or three high-toned engagements lined up, and he still spends his Friday afternoons at the window table at Le Central, talking, drinking and playing dice with socialites like Harry de Wildt and his long-time haberdasher, Wilkes Bashford.

Partly through his old friend, the late Herb Caen — who dubbed him “Da Mayor” and called him “Hizzoner” — and partly through his own charisma, Brown developed a relationship with the press that was the envy of his political colleagues and the scourge of his rivals.

“The only thing worse than being misquoted,” he once said, channeling Oscar Wilde, “is not being quoted at all.” (more…)

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 have nothing to declare but Oscar Wilde’s genius,” and was promptly sent back to England.

In March of this year, on tour promoting his book “Dandy in the Underworld,” Horsley — who’s known, in addition to having himself crucified in the Philippines, for his facility with putting a clever twist on established witticisms — was denied entry in the US on grounds of moral turpitude. It was the crowning achievement of the Bush Administration.

For the past 200 years, notoriety has always clouded the dandy: gambling debts, sex scandals and garden-variety egomania have always formed the shadow cast by the man of taste and wit. But with Sebastian Horsley’s various addictions — heroin, prostitutes, himself — this happy breed reached a new low.

In addition to his ghastly taste in clothing and penchant for spouting theoretical nonsense, Horsley broke a cardinal rule in the history of dandy literature: From Barbey and Baudelaire to Beerbohm and Wilde, dandy authors write about dandyism; they do not write about themselves as dandies.

But perhaps Horsley’s greatest distinction is that not one member of the D.net staff felt obligated to read his book.

And for that, Dandyism.net awards Mr. Horsley the title 2008 Dandy of the Year.

Photo by Moritz Steiger. 

Since Dandyism.net’s beginnings, we’ve shamelessly raided the oeuvre of American artist J.C. Leyendecker to illustrate our posts. In the early days, before our scowling mascot was created, we used a Leyendecker image next to the site’s logo. Currently, we use Leyendeckers to illustrate the notorious “How Dandy Are You?” quiz, as well as the “Test of Dandy Knowledge.”

We’ve always seen in Leyendecker’s images a singular sartorial elegance, patrician demeanor, a certain frostiness, and a rock-solid masculinity. Naturally it took a gay man to create such images.

Now we can finally post Leyendecker images without shame, thanks to a nihil obstat from the publisher of the new book “J.C. Leyendecker,” by Laurence and Judy Cutler.

It all came about as a result of D.net webmaster Christian Chensvold’s profile of the artist for the online magazine at RalphLauren.com. Writes Chenners:

In 1905, Leyendecker created his most memorable legacy, leaping from the purely visual to the powerfully symbolic. In an age when detachable shirt collars were de rigeur, Leyendecker’s Arrow Collar Man—a mascot for the menswear company Cluett, Peabody & Co.—became what Cutler calls the first real advertising campaign and produced the first sex symbol of either gender.

In a campaign lasting twenty-five years, Leyendecker portrayed an archetypal American masculinity that was equal parts football hero and urbane man-about-town. Whether clutching a briar pipe or guiding a winsome debutante across the dance floor, the Arrow Collar Man embodied a vision of American manhood that was both rugged and refined—every woman’s dream. “At one point,” says Cutler, “Leyendecker’s Arrow Collar Man got more fan mail than Rudolph Valentino.”

Below are a few more images from the artist, all courtesy of Abrams Books, via American Illustration Gallery, NYC. (more…)

Recently a reader known as Dr. Bathybius left a comment on Michael Mattis’ post “Life’s Not Fair.” The comment was a piquant one, and as the post was no longer the lead, we feared the comment would go unseen, and that all hell would not break loose. So we contacted the poster, expressed our interest in running his comment as its own post, and requested a photograph of himself in his finery. In exchange, we gave our dandy word of honor (admittedly not worth much) that we would not editorialize at his expense, such as by wondering aloud, for example, whether he is one of the founders of International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The doc agreed, in exchange that we fix his embarrassing typos.

And so we present a mini-essay from a genuine retro-eccentric (and LiveJournal blogger), pictured at left in an exclusive photo for D.net.

It seems there is a war between the GQ-Dandies and the Bohemians/Décadents of which I was previously unaware! Well then, “…into the breach! …every man-jack of you!” I had thought that refinement of experience (sartorial or otherwise) was the order of the day (callow youth that I was). But, alas, after taking the ‘How Dandy are you’ quiz, I realize that I am already pre-reviled by your elite fashion cadre as an eccentric, an oddity and perhaps even (dare I say it?) a clown! This is most especially distressing in that Mr.Mattis belongs to the same confraternity in SF that we (Mr. Seeley and myself) do. Has he forgotten his scandalous San Franciscan roots? The name of this organization he well knows, but I’ll not mention it here (to protect all relevant parties).

Like all divergent species, we each have a common set of ancestors, whether Brummell, Baudelaire or Barbey d’Aurevilly. Let us find some solace or unity in that. If not, let the martial horns blare, and I shall gird my loins for doing battle with misguided and effete miscreants arguing over the number of tassels that the ideal ox-blood tinted loafer should be festooned with (2 tassels too staid? 3 tassels completely outré?). Let the tyranny that the sack suit has exerted over the 20th century be laid waste, and a more enlightened time dawn where the male homo sapiens has yet more radiant plumage than his crypto-gynocratic mate. After all, I would rather be a comical lion fighting on my feet, than a pallid, navel-gazing fashion-lemur like Tom Wolfe, in his Antebellum, white-washed, pseudo-”Slave-Owner” togs, carefully cogitating the rarefied alchemy that is the “two-olive martini,” all the while genuflecting at the altar of tepidness.

“Braccae illae virides cum subucula rosea et tunica Caledonia-quam elenganter concinnatur!”

Gentlemen, I remain your assiduous nemesis ever,

REA3      8¬}D-

P.S. Young Mr.Seeley is an actual friend of mine. Please consider him my second at the duel.

When Bathybius submitted his photo, he offered the following:

The suit (if you’re curious, or a fact-collector) is bespoke as tailored by Favourbrook of Jermyn Street, (Saville Row/Picadilly), London:

http://www.favourbrook.com

Again, my reason for commenting in the first place is to bemoan the fact that Dandyism seems to become a more and more restricted definition with time. Where is the splendor of current male sartorial fashion? Whenever I see yet another stereotypical navy blue blazer with brass buttons, I muse, “Where are the explorers? Where are the new frontiers? Can one re-purpose the fashions of the past (with modifications/updates) to create new taste-pleasing forms? More highly refined aesthetics?” Admittedly, I freely embrace the Décadent/Symbolist, Belle Époch/Mal du Siècle aesthetic, which would not be everyone’s choice, but I am speaking more of method than of matter.

As a guide to this line of inquiry, I would point to the following publication, which is at least a sign-post of what I am aspiring to (whether I am successful at it or not, one has one’s ideal and one must do what one is capable of doing in realizing said ideal):

“The Man of Fashion: Peacock Males and Perfect Gentlemen” by Colin McDowell.

Well enough of my prattling…

My warmest felicitations to you and Dandyism.net.

On September 17 I had the pleasure of speaking on Lucius Beebe at the Coffee House, one of Beebe’s own clubs. It’s a bastion of a vanished Manhattan, an outpost of the bohemian artists-and-writers world of the 1920s and ’30s. It’s still governed by its founding credo from 1915: “No brokers or bankers and perhaps no drama critics. No card playing. The club to be for sculptors, artists, foreigners, illustrators, authors, editors, professors, sportsmen, lawyers, actors, singers, playwrights, musicians, inventors, composers, statesmen, judges, etc.”

Revered above all is the organization’s Rule Six: “No Rules.”

I’d visited the club on several occasions and found its members welcoming and quirky, and easily fell into the pleasant time-warp of its atmosphere. So when my biographical series on Beebe appeared on D.net this spring, I tapped the self-promoting spirit of the Junta and proposed that I return to the Coffee House, this time as a dinner speaker. My offer was accepted.

The 30-odd attendees were seated at a single, long table. Ringed with the Windsor chairs that date to the club’s early years and anchored by towering chandeliers at both ends, the table was a convivial raft fueled by food and drink and lively conversation, one that for a couple of hours floated serenely free from the New York that clamored a few floors below.

Folks were eager to talk about Lucius, and one of the members, who worked at the Herald Tribune during Beebe’s glory days as a columnist, remembered being intimidated by his “fancy Dan” presence. Dandyism, too, proved to be of fascination, and I was pressed to offer contemporary exemplars. I abetted myself well in explaining the nuances of the Gay Talese vs. Tom Wolfe match-up. (more…)

Perhaps the most famous of all dandy admonishments is Brummell’s simple warning, “If John Bull turns to look after you, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable.”

Later worthies echo the Beau’s sentiment. “Never in your dress altogether desert that taste which is general,” is one of Pelham’s maxims in Bulwer-Lytton’s novel. “The world considers eccentricity in great things, genius; in small things, folly.”

And in his essay “Dandies and Dandies,” Max Beerbohm writes, “Is it not to Brummell’s fine scorn of accessories that we may trace that first aim of modern dandyism, the production of the supreme effect through means the least extravagant?”

So it was with great amusement not long ago that I came upon an old acquaintance who recounted an anecdote that perfectly illustrates these long-held dandy ideals.

Carlos is a fine young man of conservative style, prone to academic-looking corduroy jackets, who had recently interned at my company before moving on to a nonprofit organization. I asked how his new gig was going. “It’s the most ‘San Francisco’ place I’ve ever worked,” he said enthusiastically.

“In what way?” I asked.

“The place us full of eccentrics,” he explained. “Real San Francisco-style originals. There’s even a guy who dresses like he’s on his way to the Dickens Fair.”

“Really?” I said, arching an eyebrow. “What’s his name?”

“Gregory Seeley.”

And so I offer a new twist on an old maxim: “If Carlos turns to ask if you are on your way to the Dickens Fair, you are either too retro, too eccentric, or both.”

(Mr. Seeley is pictured at left at a company picnic.)

In 1844, at the height of his fame, Count Alfred d’Orsay found himself lampooned in print. Writing under the pen name A Man of Fashion, popular novelist John Mills published “D’Horsay: Or the Follies of the Day.” The whiff of scandal that ensued did little to obviate d’Orsay’s demand in society, perhaps because it failed to address the Count’s apparent seducing of wife, husband and daughter in the Blessington family.

However, the book was immediately suppressed for its attacks on prominent men of the day, who are depicted engaging in various acts of questionable morality.

“D’Horsay” is as tiresome and dated as one would expect, but we have excerpted a few descriptive passages for their historical value, as they show how the second-greatest dandy of all time was viewed in the diabolical monocle of a contemporary satirist.

Some descriptions are of the character D’Horsay, while others are of his sycophantic imitators. The great dandy caricaturist George Cruikshank supplied the drawing at left.

* * *

D’Horsay, or the Follies of the Day
by A Man of Fashion (John Mills), 1844

In the lower room of this house of counterfeit show, sat, or rather lounged, a leader of the votaries of pleasure. The Marquis D’Horsay was, indeed, “the glass of fashion, and the mold of form.”

From the color and tie of the kerchief which adorned his neck to the spurs ornamenting the heels of his patent boots, he was the original for countless copyists, particularly and collectively.

Even the brow which the ducal coronet occasionally pressed was proud to wear the hat imitated from the model, which every aspiring Tittlebat Titmouse of the age strove to copy in his gossamer. The hue and cut of his many faultless coats, the turn of his closely-fitting inexpressibles, the shade of his gloves, the knot of his scarf, were studied by the motley multitude with greater interest and avidity than objects more profitable and worthy of their regard, perchance, could possibly hope to obtain. Nor did the beard that flourished luxuriantly upon the delicate and nicely chiseled features of the Marquis escape the universal imitation.

Those who could not cultivate their scanty crops into the desirable arrangement had recourse to art and stratagem to supply the natural deficiency. Atkinson and Rowland revelled in the attempts. From the extreme east to the far west ends of London, lights and shadows of the Marquis were plentiful as daisies in merry May. Wristbands, both false and real, were turned over cuffs of every dye and texture, and, in short, from the most essential article of the modish lion’s dress to the most trifling, not an item was left confined to its pristine state of originality. (more…)

Dedalus Books, publishers of such dandy classics as “The She-Devils” by Barbey d’Aurevilly and “Monsieur de Phocas” by Jean Lorrain, has put out a new edition of J.-K. Huysmans’ seminal work of French Decadence, “Against Nature.”

Released last week in the UK and this week in the US, the book features a new translation, introduction, bibliography in English, the celebrated preface by Huysmans written 20 years later, and extensive notes on the author’s obscure historical and cultural references.

It also features as a cover image a self-portrait by Egon Schiele looking like a LiveJournal blogger.

“‘Against Nature’ will be Dedalus’s seventh Huysmans title and the fourth book to be translated by Brendan King,” Dedalus founder Eric Lane told Dandyism.net. “Our edition will be the definitive edition of ‘Against Nature’ for the next 30 years. A classic text benefits from having new translations to keep it alive. It also reinforces its importance and reminds people that it is a book for today as yet another new translation has appeared.”

Below is an interview with Brendan King, a Paris-based writer and translator who recently completed his Ph.D. on Huysmans, and who runs the site Huysmans.org. Following that is a sample of King’s translation, including the “sermon on dandyism” passage in which Des Esseintes, the book’s hero, looks back on the sartorial follies of his youth.

(more…)