When Dandyism.net launched in 2004, we stated as our mission the desire to rescue the dandy from the slag heap of history through rigorous scholarship […]
Snob Story
G. Bruce Boyer herein recounts a lesser-known anecdote about the stupendously dapper Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., with whom Boyer was privileged to lunch late in Fairbanks’ […]
Count, Your Blessings
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, […]
Dancing Chic To Chic
Fred Astaire lounges in a swank London flat, attired in a speckled dressing gown and cravat, musically daydreaming about the girl he’s just met. He’s […]
Proud Independence
From “Memoirs From Beyond the Grave” By Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, 1848 Image: 1890 engraving of Almack’s Club in 1815 There was no longer any question […]
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 […]
Edge Of Reason
Laren Stover’s “Bohemian Manifesto” is not a manifesto at all. It does not hail the wave-like crash of a mighty new movement against the rocky […]
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 […]
Romp And Circumstance
Despite doing his best work while wearing no clothes, Giacomo Casanova has been anointed a sort of patron saint of dandies. Stephen Robins, in his […]
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 […]
Brideshead Relinquished
Outrage against cultural debasement becomes a dandy as much as a good pair of white summer flannels, but the film adaptation of “Brideshead Revisited” stirred […]
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 […]
The Fake’s Progress
Every era gets the dandies it deserves. The Regency got Brummell, a true sartorial innovator whose wit was as crisp as his country-washed linen. Count D’Orsay […]
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 […]
Cutting A Dash
In the 2011 BBC production of Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations,” the protagonist Pip, who is newly risen from poverty by an anonymous benefactor, is told […]
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 […]
At Least They’re Not Boring
One of the more frequent visitors to D.net HQ is a certain Lady Friend who hails from Japan and has spent much of her career […]
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, […]