SNP’s word of the day: Dandy(ism)

Word: Dandy(ism)

Meaning: A dandy’s a man overcommitted to leisure, refinement, and, above all, aesthetics; dandyism is the seemingly effortless pursuit of (outward, at least) superiority.

Usage: “A dandy is not a gentleman: he is a sly parody of one.” — commenter “Victor Allen Crawford, III” on dandyportraits.blogspot.com.

You should know it because: Yesterday everyone was all Twitter-y over a New York Times story on black dandies and their “post-subversive” Black Ivy style. Jon Caramanica is a great writer, Street Etiquette is a great blog, and together they make for a great story, albeit a late one. It seems more post-Sartorialist than post-subversive, and I don’t see what’s so new about sharply dressed black guys. The other night, I watched this incredible 2008 documentary about Crips and Bloods (it’s called… Crips and Bloods) and loved how totally radically the OGs (Original Gangsters) dressed. In the ’50s, it was all careless pompadours or clean shaves, lean trousers, white cuffed tees, and fedoras worn at a rakish tilt. In the ’70s, it was more collegiate stuff mixed with Afro-redux style.

Caramanica alludes to this past and the new gent’s preservations but doesn’t go further back. Nowhere in his piece does he mention that the first black dandies were very high-end American slaves; I guess that might be too troubling. Or that the first white dandies in London and Paris (Beau Brummel, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and his famed character Dorian Gray) were said to obsess over elegance as a way to refute egalitarianism; in short, dandyism has always been classist. Listen to this old-school Baudelaire quote: “In the confusion of such times certain men, déclassé, disgusted, idle, but all endowed with native strength, may conceive the project of founding a new kind of aristocracy, which will be all the more difficult to destroy as it will be based on the most precious and indestructible faculties, and on the God-given gifts which work and wealth cannot bestow.” Reeks of privilege/oppression, no?

Anyway. The sublime flair of dandyism hides a troubled history. But then, like so many trends in fashion, it’s been repeated enough times to appear very near meaningless.

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