You can’t watch the Academy awards. Not in person, in any case, unless you’re a seat-filler. It’s by invitation only, to Academy members, and the Academy determines the guest list. So how do you get to be a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Why, your name is endorsed by your Academy branch’s executive committee, then you are sponsored by two existing Academy members, and membership is by invitation of the Board of Governors. So when it seems like the judging criterion is a bit biased, that’s because it is, thank you very much. And if you don’t like it, well, we’ll just pass you over for membership this year.

But they do throw a heck of an awards show. Actually, they throw four, but only one is televised; because who wants to see overweight, balding technicians get Oscars for Science and Technology?

The Oscars is supposed to be a classically formal affair. Dinner dress has been the norm, but full dress has not been unheard of. (On the Awards Parade Formality Continuum, the Academy Awards fits in somewhere between the snooty Tonys and the extravagant Golden Globes.) Before we go further, let’s set the bar high with Kirk Douglas at the Oscars in 1950. That’s how it’s done.

No one opted for dress suits at this year’s Oscars. Well, host Billy Crystal tried. (No, Zach Galifianakis and Will Farrell, presenters in all-white dress suits and cymbals, don’t count.) Billy Crystal’s suit was just awful. The jacket was cut well enough, but everything under it was four shades of wrong. White tie is an exacting mistress who will not tolerate tepid commitment. Crystal could tell something was wrong, too; he seemed uncertain and ill at ease wearing it. It seemed as if the clothes themselves shamed him into dressing down into a less-distracting dinner suit for the second half of the show. That’s too bad, really; Crystal’s age and gravitas have grown him into the role of Oscars host, one who should be able to confidently wear proper white tie. The brash young outsider joking his way through the show has matured into a latter-day Bob Hope, who gives the Oscars the self-deprication it so desperately needs to be accessible to Joe America, and keep it from sinking into a self-congratulatory event for Hollywood insiders who take themselves far too seriously.

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Last Sunday, February 5, the people of the United States over-indulged in their annual ritual of rough spectacle, the Super Bowl. American football, which somehow split from its English parent, Rugby Football, in the 19^th century, has become the American institution nonpareil, as much a religion as a sport. As a game, it combines brute force, military-style battlefield strategy and, occasionally, physical poetry.

But the Super Bowl is more than the ultimate season-ending championship game. It’s America’s “barbaric yawp,” an over-the-top, overtly commercial, Roman-style imperial pageant (as Madonna’s show at half-time more than casually suggested).

Even those Americans who don’t like football watch the Super Bowl. Why? The commercials. Since Apple’s famed “1984” spot first burst onto the scene during Super Bowl XVII, the game has been used as a canvas one which the world’s top advertising agencies and brands show off their finest “art.”

Among this year’s Super Bowl ads was this one from Gillette, maker of shaving apparatus.

The ad, called “Masters of Style” features:

Adrien Brody, the Hollywood man about town and star of the triple Oscar award-winning film, “The Pianist.”

Gael García Bernal, steamy Latin lover and lead in such romantic comedies as “A Little Bit of Heaven.”

André 3000, singer-songwriter, member of the hip-hop duo “OutKast,” and creator of the “Benjamin Bixby” line of 1930s, college-inspired clothing.  (You’ve seen him here before.)

Well, what about it? Who’s the Super Bowl dandy? One? None? All? Or should there be a flag on this play? Let us know in the comments.

Yesterday was the 25th annual Gatsby Summer Afternoon in the San Francisco Bay Area. The many duded-up gents give us the chance to revisit our “Who’s the Dandy?” series with our first-ever costume edition. Leave a comment to cast your vote on your favorite outfit. Above are John Akridge and Benny Reese. Below, Slimm Buick: (more…)

Shortly after his arrival in Africa, the narrator of Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness” meets an accountant wearing a spotless white suit in the middle of the jungle. Although he’s but a colonial numbers-cruncher, the image is an arresting one: Might such a triumph of elegance over environment be the ultimate dandyish gesture?

Dandies of the Brummellian ilk delight in the sober shades of fall and winter, but d’Orsay-type butterfly dandies shine best in summer, delighting in suit fabrics such as gabardine, seersucker, linen, dupioni silk and fresco, and shirtings made of gossamer cloths like voile and batiste.

Although the dandy can dress with panache in the most sweltering of climes without relying on a suit and tie, as our own Nick Willard has demonstrated, when it comes to formal dressing, the dandy faces two divergent paths: He can show his disregard for the mercury and remain sharply tailored, or he can embrace the lazy days of summer with a softer silhouette and a rumpled sprezzatura.

And so we submit for your encomium or disapprobation the following gents, which include two new faces and four notorious ones. Which one best expresses summertime elegance?

Candidate number one (below left) is a newcomer from the pages of the New York Times. He is dressed up from head-to-toe, making no visible concession to the heat and even donning a waistcoat as an extra layer (or two layers, since it’s double-breasted.)

On the right is Will, who previously faced off against manton in the WTD gladiatorial arena. He’s stylishly dressed in seersucker, but what about the dark tie and pocket square?

Candidate number three, socialite Geoffrey Bradfield, is still wearing his forced smile, though his trademark double-cuff-shoot is sadly absent. Is the pink suit a daring statement, or is he only channeling John Dodelande? And the bit loafers with no socks — summer staple or gauche gesture?

On the right, Andrea Sperelli, another previous WTD contender, expresses everything about summer except the joy. Does he resemble a Bright Young Thing at Oxford, or a Wimbledon linesman dressed by Ralph Lauren?

Candidate number five is James Jimenez, a decadent impresario who, as you can probably tell, is a close friend of Lord Whimsy. A fan is certainly one way of staying cool. Next to him is Dandy of the Year Lapo Elkann. Does the ventilating open neck and the three mismatched shades of white epitomize sprezzatura or merely slovenliness?

Recently a reader left a comment suggesting that no one should be allowed to dispense sartorial criticism without first offering himself up for scrutiny.Since he couldn’t possibly have been referring to us, we hereby present for your edification, entertainment and target-practice, two of the most exacting and opinionated micro-celebrities of the Internet men’s clothing world: manton and Will.

Writing under the username “manton,” former Republican speechwriter Michael Anton has posted over 10,000 times on the minutiae of men’s dress on the sites Style Forum, Ask Andy About Clothes and The London Lounge. His obsession with precise measurements led us to dub him “the quarter-inch dandy.”Under the pseudonym Nicholas Antongiavanni, Anton authored “The Suit,” in which he presumes to tell the world what dandies like and don’t like:

Because of its smartness and rarity, a single-breasted jacket with peak lapels is greatly favored by dandies.

Dandies like ticket pockets for the extra panache they impart.

Dandies enjoy silk, but only the the rough, matte-finished weave known as dupioni.

Dandies take great care in selecting their socks.

Above all, no dandy wears solid socks, for that is stylistic surrender. The dandy’s favorite sock pattern has always been the clock.

For the record, Anton uses the term “dandy” far more broadly than we do. Furthermore, speaking authoritatively on behalf of all dandies is something that only the Junta is entitled to do, and then only when we speak ex cathedra. We’ve given our imprimatur, though, to a few of Anton’s better pronouncements.

More avuncular in advice and modest in ambition is Will, who writes the blog A Suitable Wardrobe. Will has offered his opinion a mere 7,000 times on the three main men’s clothing sites. A professional consultant and public speaker, his blog is a fond discourse on classic clothing, heavily annotated with splendid illustrations from Apparel Arts and Esquire of the 1930s. He is one of D.net’s competitors in the Fabby Awards.

Both Anton and Will are certainly masters of the basics — the grammar, if you will — of how to dress. But just as a sentence can be grammatically correct but ineloquent, so to a man can be correctly dressed and inelegant.

And so we ask you: Who’s The Dandy?

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Pictured are two dapper denizens of that online circle of hell known as Dandyland. On the left is Andrea Sperelli and on the right is Winston Chesterfield. Both are in their early twenties, both devote fanatical attention to their appearance, both dabble in the arts (Sperelli does amateurish drawings while Chesterfield writes music), and both have the supreme dandy virtue of being incorrigibly vain.

Beyond that, they couldn’t be more different.

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This above all: A dandy must dress like a dandy. Ah, but how does a dandy dress?

It has always been hard to pinpoint, and it certainly changes over time. The great dandies started as innovators and ended as fossils. It is only with hindsight that we can judge who is timeless.

But what identifies a dandy has become even harder to pinpoint today. General attire has gotten so casual, standards so relative, change so rapid. Who’s a dandy and who is merely well dressed, who is innovative and who is eccentric, who is classic and who is bland, who is dashing and who is ostentatious, who is stylish and who is slavish — who’s to tell?

You, of course.

Below are three men. Use the leave-a-comment feature and tell us who’s the most dandyish and why. Don’t criticize the minutiae of the outfits: Nobody cares that you would have worn checked socks instead of solid. Focus on the overall issue: does he look like a dandy or not?

Here are the candidates:

The first gent adheres to Brummell’s dictum that “If John Bull turns around to look at you, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable.” He is understated in a solid navy suit and a squared-off white pocket handkerchief. While John Bull may not turn around to look at him, is he still too stiff or too tight? Especially in a society of track suits, flip flops and trucker hats, dressing up may suffice to look like a dandy, but does he have enough pop?

The man in the second photo reeks of cigarette smoke and spezzatura. His attire is relaxed and informal — polo shirt, jeans and wide belt — but tailored. He has carried the Beau’s principle of simplification into the new millennium, but is he elegant enough?

The boulevardier in the last photo believes in color and a flourish of individual touches. He enlivens the standard-issue navy pinstripe with a pink hat, pocket handkerchief and tie, and further accessorizes his ensemble with spectator shoes and two pairs of glasses, one perched on his nose and one dangling from his jacket pocket. Attention to detail or accessory overload? Modern-day dandy or retro gangster?

If your comments are especially canny (or nasty), we’ll make this a regular feature. That means we’ll run another trio for you to pick apart when we‘ve run out of fresh material, and a post about Willard’s preference in shoelaces has been the lead story for two weeks.

Pictured are Robert Burke and Lino Ieluzzi (via The Sartorialist), and an ad for Marc Guyot (via A Suitable Wardrobe).

Los Angeles Times, January 19, 2005

Michael Henry Adams’ epiphany came in the quiet stillness of the Akron Public Library. Hanging on the wall were photographs of the Harlem Renaissance era by James Van Der Zee. “There were images of blacks who were every bit as polished and elegant as Clark Gable or Cary Grant,” Adams says. “That was a revelation for me, and also a justification. Before that, I would have felt that to identify with the style of Fred Astaire would have not been something that reflected blackness.”

In an age when T-shirts and jeans are the closest thing to world democracy, true style icons are rare. But in October, Esquire magazine crowned OutKast frontman Andre 3000 as the best-dressed man in the world. With urban street wear firmly lodged in the mainstream, Andre 3000’s penchant for hats, vests and Savile Row tailoring suddenly appeared less a personal idiosyncrasy than the result of a man who had found a kind of sartorial enlightenment.

An increasing number of African American men, in fact, are embracing classic gentlemen’s attire, riding the forefront of fashion’s return to luxury and timeless classics while adopting a mode of expression that subverts stereotypes of black style. In contrast to the mostly white metrosexual phenomenon — a fop-fest of manicures, grooming gewgaws and trendy designer wear — today’s renaissance of black elegance seems a striving for dignity and good taste in an era not exactly known for either. (more…)

It’s one of those questions that occasionally gets academics, students of culture, and cocktail-party conversationalists in a lather. Indeed, merely asking the question can be enough to get you into hot water. Regardless what side you happen to lean toward, you’re likely find an index finger stabbed in your direction and palm slapped loudly against your Louis Quinze table. In all likelihood you will be pilloried as either a stuffy reactionary or fashionably intellectual provocateur.

The question, of course, is whether a woman can be a dandy.

Feminist intellectuals latch onto the dandy, citing what they see as his show-biz quality in order to substantiate their pet theses about the nature of gender — mainly that it is a social construct, an unending performance that has little to do with the performer’s genetic heritage, biological make-up, or the shape of his or her wedding tackle. As evidence, they cite long lists of “female dandies,” women who prefer trousers to skirts and bow ties to bustles — George Sand to Romaine Brooks — to illustrate their points about “transgression” and all that claptrap.

This naturally meets with some derision from strict dandiacal constructivists. “Bah!” they exclaim. “That’s not dandyism; that’s drag!”

About this time the finger-pointing and table-slapping starts, and the next thing you know you find yourself taking sides over less theoretical issues, such as women’s membership at Augusta National Golf Club and executive pay parity. It only goes downhill from there.

So I have good reason for doing what I am about to do, which is avoid this argument as if it were a colony of badly tailored lepers. I live a comfortable and quiet life married to a beautiful young woman who loves me, and I will be damned if I’m going to spoil it now by getting into an argument over just who wears the dandy pants in the family. In fact, I would not touch that valise full of rattlesnakes with a ten-foot cigarette holder.

What I am going to do instead is tell the story of a remarkable woman, one who has been called a “dandy” by some very important persons, including Quentin Crisp.

Perhaps the only thing that can be certain about the Marchesa Luisa Casati, 48 years after her death in 1957, is that she was the most flamboyant and dramatic character to flit through the early 20th century European beau monde. They simply don’t make her kind anymore: richer than God, gloriously semi-sane, with outrageous taste in friends, art, décor, clothes, houses, pets and lovers. Guests of Casati’s boudoir were a veritable who’s who of the aristos, aesthetes, artists, bons vivants, poets, dancers and dandies that made the early 20th century’s art scene what it was: totally, utterly, and delightfully mad.

In fact, Casati made Peggy Guggenheim look like an ariviste Midwestern hausfrau by comparison. No doubt Casati served as the inspiration for the crazy aunt archetype later celebrated in books such as Partick Dennis’s “Auntie Mame.”

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Esquire’s “Best Dressed Men in the World” issue confers highest honors on pop star Andre 3000. The colorful, creative Andre, inspired by classic finery and a true individual among his musical peers, is the lone natty gent amid a sea of mediocrity and platitude. And Esquire’s decision to eschew time-honored standards of what it means to be well dressed by including t-shirts and jeans — so long as they express the wearer’s “individuality” — should have its editors eating crow.

In its September issue, Esquire writes that fashion director Nick Sullivan and fashion editor Wendell Brown (whose photo barely registers a quiver on the panache seismograph), “combed the earth” seeking out “men whose sense of style stems from an expression of individuality rather than simply designer labels.” They further wished to avoid men who are “sort of famous for being famous, or stylish because they’re famous.” Fashion, they say, “is about knowing what type of guy you are and putting together a look that works for you.”

Yet in an act of apparently unintentional irony, Esquire has done exactly what it said it wouldn’t.

The 18 men included seem to have been chosen more for embodying characteristics the magazine wished to highlight, for being handsome or charismatic, or for representing fields Esquire wished to include (pop culture and politics comprise the bulk of the roster). As for the designer labels remark, half of those featured were dressed and groomed by stylists in attire donated by top fashion brands.

Further, with men selected for mastering looks such “fresh outta the suitcase,” Esquire has completely changed the concept of what “best dressed” means. Does throwing on a suit coat, even a bespoke one, over a political-slogan t-shirt pass as well dressed today?

“Best dressed” is a superlative term. It assumes something quantifiable, a standard of achievement based on agreed-upon values. It proclaims that someone has risen above others, run faster, jumped higher. Yet by its own definition, Esquire’s evaluation criteria is almost wholly subjective.

Of the men selected, Esquire writes, “their individuality made manifest in everything from a luxurious bespoke suit to a basic pair of jeans.” Yet a bespoke suit alone does not make one well dressed (though it’s a good start), and jeans may make one “stylish” or “cool,” but “best dressed”?

Music producer Pharrell Williams is lauded for showing readers how to mix “old and new into something completely your own.” Hugh Grant may be charming and funny, but his selection as best dressed is more funny than charming. A quote by Spanish actor Javier Bardem has him opining about the “simple things” in his wardrobe — such as his AC/DC concert t-shirt. Actor Paul Bettany, you’ll be fascinated to know, is “as much at home in an Ozwald Boateng cocktail suit as he is in casual jeans and sneakers for bumming around the house.” Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai mixes traditional Afghan dress with Western suit jackets. Innovative, perhaps, except that no one wears Afghan clothing outside of Afghanistan.

In what seems a token nod to the traditional notion of what it means to be well dressed, Prince Charles is included. He’s shown wearing his preferred garb of double-breasted glen plaid suit, spread collar shirt, regimental tie and pocket square — and looks like a prince.

Subjectivism has been a hallmark of our culture since the 1960s. Outside the field of sports, we find it nearly impossible to say anything is better than anything else. This inability to discern the fine from the mediocre is most prevalent precisely where it shouldn’t be, among intellectuals in the arts and media — people who should know better.

While perusing Esquire, a copy of Alan Flusser’s “Dressing the Man” I’d ordered arrived by post. Delving inside, I found an entirely different take on the sartorial state of the contemporary male. Writes Flusser, “In one of fashion’s less fortunate ironies, when asked to name those public figures who now exemplify male decor, American style gurus and menswear professionals come up relatively empty-handed. Likewise, fashion journalists are equally baffled, unable to produce even a foursome of domestic male fashion exemplars under the age of sixty.”

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. is fondly remembered today, and less for his film work than for being a style icon. But he dressed in an era of accepted standards. The reason we struggle to find men who are truly well dressed, as Flusser laments, is because with the collapse of shared values and standards of dress, the entire concept of “best dressed” disappears.