Dandyism, the style and the philosophy, is uniquely British. The original dandy of 1800, George Bryan ‘Beau’ Brummell captured, in the turn of his cuff and the knot of his cravat, the studied irony and languor that defined his age. Brummell’s preoccupation with pose and appearance was derided as the last gasp of aristocratic decadence, but in many ways he anticipated the modern era – a world of social mobility in which taste was privileged above birth and wealth. Dedicated to perfection in dress and the immaculate presentation of his body, Brummell’s total control over his image finds its legacy in 21st century masculine dress styles in Britain. The tension between old and new, personal / individual and public, tradition and rebellion is just as pressing in contemporary British design language.
21st Century Dandy explores six sartorially self-conscious male types in contemporary British culture and illustrates the debt each owes to dandy philosophy. British menswear design in 2003 is at its most fertile and interesting since the Peacock Revolution in Carnaby Street in the 1960s, and it owes much to the British love of dressing up of ironic posturing – that Brummell practised so archetypically. The work of the designers, brands and manufacturing companies in our exhibition show how dandyism is at once an exclusive and democratic stance – democratic because it appears so easily attainable, but elusive in that so few succeed in getting it right. In reality, few British men could be easily categorised into one of our six types. The true dandy’s guiding principle (individual style) rejects definition by type. But the dandy principles of exquisite beauty, quality and performance are as influential in British menswear design today as they were over 200 years ago; the cultural referentiality and material quality that characterises the best of British design could not find a better muse in the 21st century than the dandy.
Brummell’s direct stylistic descendant is the Gentleman. Today, as in previous centuries, the Gentleman is defined by his relationship to property (rural and urban). It is an easy, natural association reflected in an apparent effortlessness of dress, manners and social bearing. In the 21st century, however, it is an aristocracy of talent rather than birth that the Gentleman represents. The new Gentleman’s most important quality is success and the power that affords. Second to that is the reflection of his power through discreet and coded means.
In clothing, this can be seen in both the style of the new Gentleman’s clothes and the way he buys them, principally in the privacy of the tailor’s suite. Gentlemanly dress is loaded with expressive clues – the turn of a collar or cuff, the size and style of a button and the colour and fastening of a shoe have each become one of the few ways of letting the world know what kind of person you are or wish to be. But Gentlemanly style categorically avoids ostentation; the practical, contemporary uniform of grey or navy suit, black lace-up shoe, white shirt and modestly colourful tie are more than influenced by the subtlety of Brummell’s own approach.
Contemporary tailors like Timothy Everest, Charlie Allen and Richard Anderson are the standard-bearers for Gentlemanly discretion in the 21st century. Whilst all three are taking a fresh visual approach to a traditional trade, their innovations still hold quality, propriety and discretion at their core; the locations they have chosen to pursue their trade (Spitalfields, Islington and Savile Row respectively) are still hubs of power and influence.
The Hoxton Dandy subverts materials, form and function in the name of style. Hoxton Square, once a bleak, principally industrial quarter of East London, now finds itself at the heart of a trajectory of bohemianism that began in Soho in Brummell’s time. Populated by young creative people in search of large studios and cheap rents, Hoxton has quickly become a hub of new media / graphic / furniture / fashion design style that embraces the ‘gritty’ urban reality of its high-rise blocks and crumbling warehouses and the area’s history of craft-based and industrial manufacturing.
Artisan clothing has often drawn upon dress types more usually associated with the working man in order to emphasise the masculinity of artistic pursuit, the physical labour involved in its production. This is no less true of the Hoxton style, which is rooted in a flamboyant urban camouflage – a mix of military iconography, ‘peasant’ staples (roughly cut jackets, gilets, jeans, Guernsey jumpers) and industrial work wear, made from high performance fabrics (rip-stop nylon, anti-ballast, Teflon®-treated wool and Coolmax® cotton jersey) whose functionality always far outweighs their wearers’ need.
Originality is as crucial for the Hoxton Dandy as it was for Brummell. Oscar Wilde once said, ‘One should either be a work of Art, or wear a work of Art’ and Hoxton style is the ultimate expression of the music / fashion / art trinity that characterises British street style in the 21st century. Demonstrably extant as a species, the Hoxton Dandy has his own style press (it is no coincidence that magazines such as Dazed & Confused and i-D are based in or around the area), and hordes of ready followers making his the hardest image to maintain as individual. As the West End’s theatres and gentleman’s clubs provided platforms for performance of dress in Wilde’s early 19th century, so too do the wide, open bars and gallery spaces of Hoxton Square.
In his time, it was the modernity of Brummell’s monochromatic style that marked him out against the tired raiment adopted from the European baroque. Modernism in the 20th century struggled to establish itself as a positive choice in British design culture, yet there have been intense and passionate periods of flirtation with clean lines and rationalism – momentary reprieves from both the ludic sensibiliy more common in British design and the prevailing conservatism of the mainstream.
The early British Modernists of the 1950s sought to emulate the socially mobile elements of American society. Stylistically, they drew inspiration from the sleek, sharp and minimal suit favoured by the avant-garde musicians of the East Coast jazz movement. Philosophically, early Mods saw themselves as ‘citizens of the world’, a world in which it only mattered where you were going, not where you came from – a sentiment Brummell would have endorsed.
In 2003, clean lines and muted colours once more afford relief from the riot and parody of post-modernism that has dominated British fashion since the emergence of Vivienne Westwood and, latterly, John Galliano. The Neo-Modernist style draws, as it did in Brummell’s day, on established sartorial traditions but subverts them through materials (denim for suits, shirting fabrics for linings), form (tighter, sharper and leaner than the norm) and, ultimately, function. The contemporary monochrome suit might be made of utility materials and with structural details that would withstand physical labour, but it is in fact a costume for an urbane, creative society at leisure in the cafés and smoky bars of Soho and Mayfair.
The Terrace Casual performs his identity on the terraces of the football ground. The early 80s ‘Casual’ was vehemently patriotic – his goal, the ‘smartening-up’ of Britain’s football supporting fraternity. European games introduced in the early 80s showed Britain’s fans in stark contrast to their Italian and French counterparts whose immaculate dress prompted a revolution in UK working-class style. The British football fan became a principal consumer of mostly European luxury sporting brands – Burberry, Fila, Lacoste and Ellesse. Today’s Terrace Casual was born of similar influences.
What separates him from his forebears is that the garments he favours are principally British. Burberry still features prominently in this language, but is joined by Aquascutum, DAKS, Cordings and an abundance of tweed. The upper class sporting pursuits which with these clothes are associated (hunting, shooting, fishing) are redolent of the masculine camaraderie and corporeal engagement of club life favoured by Brummell and his circle. Following Brummell’s example, the Terrace Casual is engaged in the positioning of traditional upper class ‘country’ style in the urban environment, co-opting it for the pursuit of leisure rather than the management of rural estates.
Football has emerged as a driver for a ‘soft’ nationalism in 2003 that stems directly from 19th and 20th century cultivation of sport as a moral site for the making of national and regional identity and for the transmission of traditional values of hard work and perseverance to the urban masses. The Terrace Casual upholds these values through his dress style as much as he subverts them. Morality (another of Brummell’s motivating principles) is expressed through hygiene (crisp sporting whites, carefully pressed trousers, brilliant white trainers) and hard work that facilitates his access to luxury brands supposedly outside his reach.
The inherent nobility of the ideal male body is entwined with the moral superiority of the sporting physique and prowess that has been celebrated in romantic literature for centuries. The tailor’s challenge is to conceal the effects of the worst excesses of his clients’ lifestyles, but London’s tailors are also famed for mastering the art of cut and materials that emphasise muscularity and stature, creating an ideal body that separates the wearer from the norm. In an age where celebrity afforded by beauty is privileged above all other talents, it is no coincidence that London’s Celebrity Tailors are in the ascendant. Richard James, Ozwald Boateng, Mark Powell and John Pearse all display an acute awareness of the body as seen through the camera lens.
Powell is known principally for his showmanship, both in his personal style and the style of his cut. Drawing on shapes privileged by one of Britain’s first true celebrities of the modern age, the Duke of Windsor (Oxford Bags, fur-collared coats), Powell produces suits that eschew gentlemanly propriety to create a larger than life figure, a magnificence of stature reminiscent of powerful men with popular appeal. James, Boateng and Pearse focus on the construction of spectacle. Each tailor deploys, with varying degrees of subtlety, an abundance of colour, changeant fabrics, sparkling adornment and close fitting cut in the pursuit of a figure of distinction. It is pure performance, both in the bravado of the maker and self-assurance of the wearer. Whilst Brummell may have disapproved of the flamboyance of these tailoring styles, he would have been fascinated by the cult of celebrity around them. Crucial to their success in creating celebrity bodies is each tailor’s own notoriety; they are as much icons of style as the clients they dress.
Without the formal strictures that govern social status in Britain – class, dress, manners, and property – there would be little to push against or explore in its contemporary culture. British fashion is most characterised by our designers’ interpretation of national tradition. The perception of Britain as reliable, dowdy and conservative affords designers the perfect stereotype to both celebrate and unravel with each new generation. Few other national identities offer such enticing challenges. At the other extreme, Britain’s puritanical leanings perpetuate bawdiness and revelry, qualities no less a part of the national heritage.
Designers Paul Smith and Vivienne Westwood consistently re-evaluate what it means to be British and how that understanding can be expressed through dress. Smith’s work shows an acute awareness of British bourgeois aspirations, combining a self-parodying humour with a relentless adoption of international reference (riotous colour, print and embellishment) to reflect the more languid, post-war Britain of cricket matches and high tea. The resulting collections are as beloved by the descendants of those he simulates as they are by his significant international audience who respond principally to the affection he shows for his subject matter. Westwood exploits a much more urban iconography, mixing the language of elite Western dress (cravats, military regalia, strict tailoring, taffeta, lace) with that of the ‘outsider’ (tartan, rubber, leather, safety pins, shalwar-style trousers) to create a new language imbued with parody and conflict. Each fosters the individuality in dress that is so closely linked to dandyism and to British fashion at its best.
In 2003 a new generation of designers, Maria Chen, LCFP, Noki, Wale Adayemi, Arkadius and Peter Jensen, have set about finding new ways to define individuality in a more globally aware and visually saturated environment. Their take on British culture is poignant and dissenting, humorous and transgressive, informed by their own cultural experience and resulting in objects that seem familiar yet strange and new.
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