Swedish scholar Peter K Andersson delves into the history of the dandy, western society’s snappiest of dressers, from Oscar Wilde to the teddy boys of the 1950s, the almost-forgotten mashers of the 1880s to the new romantics a century later.
Having grown up “a solitary chap in a world of blokes”, Andersson was always drawn to the idea of the distinctively dressed dandy. For Andersson, the dandy is not to be confused with the 18th-century “fop”, and is a particular societal sub-set, mostly made up of men but occasionally including women, who “created their own styles and codes, who have partially borrowed or stolen fashions from the elites, but made them into their own and more often than not creating new trends and shaping the fashions for the populace”.
Andersson describes 14 distinctive case studies of different dandy subcultures, from the early 19th to the late 20th centuries, explaining their origins, as well as the customs and conduct of the dandies themselves.
Most dandyish culture stemmed from Britain, with the writer proposing Beau Brummell as the first modern dandy; a favourite of Prince George, Brummell’s gambling habits led to a fall from grace and a swift move to Paris to escape his creditors. However, Andersson draws parallels with international groups, including the calicots and gandins of Paris, the American zoot-suiters and the sapeur culture of Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo.
Dublin, part of the British empire for much of Andersson’s period of study, features in a notable 1818 news report, when two dandies who offended some street-sellers were dragged into a backyard, “where an assembly of ‘stout females’ proceeded to tie their cravats together before throwing snuff at their faces”.
Moustaches (real and false), canes, cigars, high-heeled boots, spurs, monocles, high collars and tall hats, as well as various styles of jackets and trousers, all feature prominently as Andersson takes us on a whistlestop tour of the swells, gents and dudes who played a huge role in the establishment of the mass-market fashion industry.
While many of Andersson’s anecdotes are fascinating, from the transgender dandies of interwar Berlin to the teddy boy photographs of film director Ken Russell, this is primarily an academic tome and thus the tone veers more towards the austere than the conversational. Casual readers beware.
