Catherine Breillat’s “The Last Mistress” opens today in New York.

An official selection at the Cannes Film Festival last year, the movie is based on dandy scribe Barbey d’Aurevilly’s 1851 novel “Une vieille maitresse.”

Director Breillat is known for sexually provocative films such as “Romance,” for which she hired Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi to penetrate her leading lady. In “The Last Mistress,” the principals were only asked to simulate lovemaking.

Released by IFC, the film will hit Los Angeles next week, followed by a gradual nationwide rollout.

Click here for the Village Voice review.

Saith the IFC in a release:

THE LAST MISTRESS is a smoldering adaptation of Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s scandalous 19th-century novel. Set during the reign of “citizen king” Louis Philippe, it chronicles the surprising betrothal of the handsome, aristocratic, former libertine Ryno de Marigny (newcomer Fu-ad Aît Aattou) to Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida of FAT GIRL), a lovely, young and virginal aristocrat.

Lurking in the margins – and in the imaginations of high society’s gossip-hounds – is de Marigny’s older, tempestuous lover of ten years, the feral La Vellini (Argento). Described as “a capricious flamenca who can outstare the sun,” La Vellini still burns for de Marigny, and she will not go quietly.

Here’s the trailer:

Dandyland is buzzing with cynicism over the imminent release of the big-screen version of “Brideshead Revisited,” which opens August 1 in select U.S. theaters.

The production has stirred controversy since its announcement. For starters, why bother? The 1981 Granada TV Production featuring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews — plus bit players like Sir Lawrence Olivier as Papa Marchmain and Sir John Gielgud as Pater Ryder — has captivated audiences with its elegiac splendor and 11½-hour exposition of the novel.

The new adaptation immediately hit snags. The original director and cast, including Jude Law, abandoned the project for various reasons. Production finally started after a delay of nearly three years.

Then horrible rumors leaked out about what was being done to Waugh’s novel.

The Independent summarized the “remarkable differences” between the novel and new version. These include an apparently incestuous relationship between Sebastian and Julia which Charles ultimately joins; Lady Marchmain’s encouragement of Julia’s marriage to Rex, a Protestant; an innuendo that Lord Marchmain buggers his children (at least the good looking ones); and the intensification of Charles and Sebastian’s relationship from mildly homoerotic to outright homosexual.

And most troubling, there have been conflicting reports of whether Aloysius, Sebastian’s teddy bear, wound up on the cutting room floor or merely peed on it.

(more…)

Following hard upon Robert Sacheli’s three-part biography on Lucius Beebe, D.net founder Christian M. Chensvold has written an article on chartering vintage railcars — including Beebe’s Virginia City — for the online magazine at RalphLauren.com.

“Beebe hired Hollywood decorator Robert Hanley to select a crystal chandelier, 17th-century clock, red silk curtains, and working fireplace in a decorating scheme commonly referred to as Venetian Renaissance baroque, though some find ‘Barbary Coast bordello’ more accurate,” writes Chensvold.

“Pellizzer [the car's current owner] has preserved the car’s original decor as much as possible. ‘I think it’s the best car out there because of its history,’ he says. ‘And it’s certainly the most gaudy, ostentatious, and over-the-top.’”

Under a tight deadline, Chensvold was unable to ride aboard the railcar, though the current owner has promised him its future use.

In fact, at this very moment the Junta is planning a cross-country goodwill tour aboard the Virginia City.

Befitting our position as the burgermeisters of Dandyland — that worldwide Internet community of dandies and their admirers — we have added a new blogroll entitled “Dandyland,” which you’ll find in the right-hand column above Ephemera.

The list is expansive rather than exclusive. Magnanimously, the Junta, in a 3-1 vote, has opted to include in the Anschluss the websites of those we have pilloried in the past, such as Sebastian Horsley; those who’ve pilloried us, such as Andrea Sperelli; those who resigned from or were fired from D.net, such as Doran Wittelsbach and Francois-Xavier d’Arbonneau de la Bachellerie; and finally the world’s most overdressed gardener, Lord Whimsy.

Their inclusion in the blogroll does not mean we’ve changed our opinions about them, or that we will be less critical of their ideas and dress in the future. It simply means we want to provide our faithful myrmidons with the most multifaceted dandy experience possible.

We’re also confident that when readers leave our site to visit the others, they’ll appreciate Dandyism.net even more upon their return.

“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 when I could tolerate Mallarmé’s deliberate obfuscations. These days I take my whisky straight, and prefer the direct approach of AE Housman.

But recently that line resurfaced in my mind, and while I’m quite sure my flesh is sad, I began to wonder if I really had read all the books.

Sure, I tear through non-fiction, and there’s the constant speed-reading of magazines and websites, but I can’t remember the last novel to capture me the way they did in my twenties, when the world was new and each tome seemed to offer greater insight into myself and my path in life.

Finding a suitable work of literature became an exercise in dandyish discrimination in which nothing suited my taste.

Last summer I made it through a few short stories by Fitzgerald, which inspired me to sample 20th-century WASP literature. But I abandoned several stories of John O’Hara after the first page, and while I got further with Louis Auchincloss, I eventually figured that if I wanted to be sedated by gentility, I might as well read Henry James.

Was I really destined, as I alluded to recently in the forum, to simply reread Stendhal’s “Red and the Black,” Balzac’s “Lost Illusions,” and Flaubert’s “Sentimental Education” over and over for the rest of my life?

Then The Los Angeles Opera began its production of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” and in preparation I picked up my collegiate copy of Thomas Mann stories, intending to reread a story called “Tristan.” Sure enough, after two pages I came down with an instant case of dandy ennui.

I was going to put the book away, but noticed there was a story in the collection called “The Joker” that I’d never read. As I delved in, it became clear why I’ve been so blasé about reading for the last 10 years:

I’d strayed away from dandy lit.

Yes, “The Joker,” written in 1897, was a hit. So allow me, faithful myrmidons, to tell you a dandy bedtime story.

(more…)

Beau Brummell recently went slumming in denim. Slipping sartorial standards or sprezzatura?

Neither, actually.

Brummell was denim-clad in support of Jeans for Genes, a U.K. charity that raises funds for research in genetic disorders affecting children. The charity asked the entire nation of England to wear jeans on October 5, and to donate two pounds to the cause.

The event was a success, as Jeans for Genes is a lot catchier — and easier for a nation to comply with — than Cravats for Cripples.

The sacrilege was perpetrated on Brummell’s defenseless statue on Jermyn Street. The real Beau would never have swapped his starched cravat and buckskin breeches for a woolly scarf and jeans. And he certainly never would have worn braces with clips, even for a good cause.

At least the jeans were in his favored color of blue.

Always cavalier with money, Brummell would have gladly donated the two quid, though today his preferred charity would probably be Gamblers Anonymous. There are several tales of Brummell’s helping out young plungers down on their luck, but on the condition that they give up gambling and return to their families.

Perhaps beneath his cold exterior beat a heart after all.

“I was brought up with a father who raced Ferraris and wore bespoke suits. And none of that was ever discussed — it was just the way it was. I first realized I came from a stylish world when I was 18. I met kids who tried to be dandy and flamboyant. And the ones who were trying so much, when you see them twenty years later, they still don’t get it. They are still trying too much.” — Frederic Malle (nephew of director Louis Malle and perfume entrepreneur), November GQ

Belatedly thumbing through the latest men’s fashion edition of The New York Times Style Magazine, we chanced upon “Literary Types,” a photo shoot that resurrects long-dead authors in order to plug this season’s designer fashions. Among the scribes are two dandy icons, Oscar Wilde and Gabriele D’Annunzio.

“Wilde,” dressed in a mélange of Dries Van Noten, Gianfranco Ferré and Church’s, is a fair approximation of the Irish wit in his flamboyant aesthete days:

The D’Annunzio model, clad in Zegna, Yves St. Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Ferré, is a pre-packaged fashion imitation of the authentic Italian fascist who wore bespoke. Note the original’s working buttonholes, shirt with rounded collar and single French cuff, and fresh boutonnière.

But more than their attire, the quartet’s gaze reveals why dandyism has declined since its Regency heyday: Dandies began to look sensitive and vulnerable.

“Wilde” peers wistfully across the quad, while the original Oscar gazes deeply into the camera. “D’Annunzio” timidly waits for his taxi, while the decadent author and monstrous egotist admiringly reads one of his own books.

(more…)

Here at Dandyism.net, home of the “infuriatingly snooty,” we don’t usually concern ourselves with the sartorial foibles of hoi polloi. And yet occasionally as we sit at the window looking down upon the maddening crowd, we can’t help but let a few smoldering ashes of pipe tobacco fall upon the world of knaves and fools.

First up, and not that we’d never noticed it, is the observation that shabby dress plagues all demographics. Even at intimate chamber concerts attended by a small number of 50-something highbrows — people putatively old and smart enough to know better — sneakers and Hawaiian shirts are in abundance.

We’d blame it on California if it weren’t for the October issue of Town & Country, in which 75 percent of the subjects photographed are in jeans, some even barefoot. As they show off their lovely and expensive homes, these prominent people have a terrible fear of coming across as pretentious. And so everyone looks like he’s trying really hard to not look like he’s trying hard.

In Iran, meanwhile, the wearing of neckties is seen as a Western affectation (the wearing of pocket squares is punishable by death). We, however, see the eschewing of neckties as an Iranian affectation.

Nevertheless, the suit-without-a-tie look is hot right now, and expect this look to play a pivotal role on the campaign trail in America’s upcoming presidential election. JFK killed the hat; what future president will kill the tie?

By the way, in the poker pantheon of plumage, a blazer and jeans with no tie beats a suit with no tie.

Finally, watch with pity as legendary newscaster Dan Rather spends 20 minutes trying to decide whether or not he should wear a trenchcoat for an outdoor broadcast on a chilly day.

Rather’s indecision keenly illustrates another sartorial trend we’ve noticed. Although they seem like they should not be related, the growing popularity of casual dress over the past several decades has actually impeded peoples’ ability to utilize clothing for what it was originally created for: protection from the elements. It was only a generation or two ago that men and women of all classes wore hat, scarf, gloves and overcoat during the chilly months. But once hats and gloves were eradicated from the average wardrobe for formality purposes, they weren’t necessarily replaced with utilitarian alternatives. Add to this the penchant for t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, and you’ll find that even during cold weather the average person is often woefully underdressed.

If Mr. Rather had brought a cashmere chesterfield instead of a drab trenchcoat, his decision may have been easier.

“There are men today whose idiosyncrasies strike us as dandyish: their unrestrained narcissism, for example, their fastidiousness about clothes and personal hygiene, their inclination to alcohol and drug abuse, their eating disorders, their fear and depression problems, their megalomaniac and self-destructive schemes, their sense of failure and a grating void inside, their poor self-image, their incapacity of steady relationships, their subsequent loneliness, their fits of uncontrollable emotions, their manipulative philandering, and their unquenchable thirst for success.

“Whereas these ‘remarkable’ men are now conveniently diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder, 19th-century dandies based their sudden rise to fame on these idiosyncrasies and entertained their public for a remarkably long stretch of time before they were discarded for another plaything….

“We have come to associate dandyism with frivolous foppery, homosexuality, snobbery, affectation, and pointless rebellion. Nowadays, we intuitively link a dandy with a foppish young man who devotes his entire life to the cause of style, smartness, and fashion. We probably have Elton John in mind, who fastidiously overdresses in 18th-century court dresses, wears wigs and make-up, and puts on sun glasses in all colours and shapes.” — Tanja Van Dooren, “From Brummell to Byron: The Story of Early Nineteenth Century British Dandyism.”

At your next cocktail party, burnish your reputation as a great wit by passing off one or two of these quotable quotes as your own.

Reminiscent of our own “Wit and Wisdom,” this compilation about men’s dress and fashion is the work of physicist-cum-bon vivant Thomas Fink, a longtime D.net fan.

Fink is a lecturer at Institut Curie/CNRS with a Ph.D. in Physics from St. John’s, Cambridge.

But faithful myrmidons will recognize him as the author of the indispensable “The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie” and “The Man’s Book.”

It’s summertime, so “On the Street” from the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times serves up another jimmie-sprinkled scoop of silliness about men:

The gallery goes gaga over the “small revolution taking place in men’s fashion, visible in the cut and wearing of pants.” On one side of the barricade are the partisans of baggy, sagging jeans and shorts, while on the other are the sycophants of Thom Browne.

In true Sunday Styles style, oddballs get pride of place: the ringmaster of Cirque de Brigadoon dressed in a mash-up of tartan calf-length shorts and matching train case, cutaway jacket, formal waistcoat, spotted shirt, and boater; the sartorially lost boy in the glasses and Thom Browne school-daze shorts; and the shirtless sidewalk go-go boys with cash stashed in the waistbands of their matching briefs under the hipbone-grazing shorts.

The one man on the street striding with real flair is the gent in the patchwork shorts, sport coat, and skinny tie. Half of his success can be attributed to his youth, the other to the thoroughly unforced vibe that his combination radiates. He’s cool precisely because he hasn’t gone to extremes. (more…)

It should come as no surprise that our favorite topic to write about is ourselves, and so we are pleased that circumstances have again conspired to give us the opportunity. This time the pretext is last month’s unfurling of the new Netherlands-based website, dandyisme.nl.

It is described, in English, as “your site for anything that has anything to do with dandyism and style. Art, literature, facts, fiction, theories, trivial necessities, and of course nice pictures. After all, dandyism is one of the decorative arts.”

Well it’s certainly not my site.

Like history’s great men of fashion, who set a new style then winced when the style was actually followed, the enterprise bears a striking resemblance to Dandyism.net. It links to some of the same articles. It revisits many topics on which we have already authoritatively opined: Baudelaire, dandyism and fashion, the Beau. The only differences we could detect are that the upstart is written partly in broken English and partly in presumably non-broken Dutch. It also intends to mine the rich tradition of Dutch dandyism.

So we authorized our legal department to confront the perpetrator, Robert van Raffe, with the question: Why isn’t Dandyism.net good enough? He turned out to be infuriatingly affable and complimentary. (more…)

June 1 marks Dandyism.net’s third anniversary. Columnist Michael Mattis, who’s been here since the start, looks back over the past year.

Brummell would have been 229 this year. D’Orsay would have been 206, Wilde 153 and Beerbohm 135. Tom Wolfe is 76, while our own Nick Willard has more rings in his trunk than we can count.

The precise age of dandyism itself is hard to determine. You could date it from the day the Beau was introduced to the Prince of Wales. Or you could bump it back even earlier to Brummell’s school days when he realized his pole-man uniform, worn during the festivities known as Montem, was more masculine and elegant than the prevailing men’s fashions of scratchy wigs and caked powder, a realization that eventually led him to “put the modern man into pants, dark coat, white shirt and clean linen.” Or you could date it from the evening he first looked in at Almack’s in plain cloth and a conspicuous lack of baubles and lace.

But these dates may overstate the case, for the term dandyism doesn’t appear in English until later, after the French theorists had their go at reimagining le dandysme as a kind of social theory full of philosophical overtones.

Despite these cloudy origins of the creed, we do know how old Dandyism.net is. This very day we turn three. The three years have been heady, and this last one has been the headiest of all.

(more…)

Would the first meeting between Junta members Michael Mattis and Robert Sacheli be like the dinner at the Majestic Hotel where Proust and Joyce, meeting for the first and only time, barely spoke to each other?

In the case from times past, the reason for reticence was that Joyce was dead drunk. If history was to repeat itself, would Mattis play the part of Joyce? Or would it be more like the meeting between d’Annunzio and Montesquiou, where they parted lovers?

Alas, their meeting produced neither stupor nor fireworks: They liked each other and parted friends.

Here are their respective accounts of Mattis’ trip to Washington DC, and the first face-to -face meeting of these two Junta members. (more…)