Espresso on sale (July 1, 2010), in the "Company", we find an article on men's fashion for spring-summer 2011, entitled Mister Dandy. Carry forward the starting point and some step to be able to comment on its contents.
Men's fashion is a Catch-22. In the sense of paradox. In "Catch 22" Joseph Heller, was the irreconcilable contradiction in the military regulations, including the article "The only reason to seek leave from the front is madness" and another that said "Whoever asks for release from front is not crazy. " In menswear the loop is this: if a high level of creativity, is often eccentric, but when it is wise risk predictability. The deja vu, mortal sin of style. Are not infinite, even a few notes that you can play, to build the harmony of elegance manly. Fence is simple: men's fashion is an exercise in cleverness. All the more so in times that they forgive anything to anyone. So the spring-summer 2011, just presented in Milan, she moved between these poles. The bar was high: the signs of recovery are there, but they are shy, and a consumer still traumatized by the last two years of crisis, it must be disoriented. So we have seen a bombing nice initiatives, ideas and requests. To strike the imagination ...
If there is an issue, is the return of a dandy graceful (emphasis ours). That does not seem to give weight to anything in his contented indolence So the man D & G, and presented herself to a picnic dressed in Vichy, often in Bermuda, other end inevitable, prints and patterned espadrilles Hawaii. In the evening, the dinner jacket is soft, pastel colors. Neodandy, even D'Annunzio, the Etro man who wears paisley prints on shirts in georgette silk shorts that joins. The work does not seem his concern, as is the case by Salvatore Ferragamo: easy to imagine her man on the Croisette, set for perfect blue blazer, striped jackets, light sandals chic. Horses exasperated tones, his is the most dandy dandy of them all: he has imagined a trip to Indonesia, hence the color and prints, embroidered shirts, silk animal print, the details sequins. A man who starts with travel bags in suede and crocodile: he slipped in mohair jackets and slippers, evening crystals.
Barthes in "The dandyism et la mode" (Dandies and dandyism, United States Lines, 1962) says that fashion has killed dandyism generalizations: "It is the intervention of an intermediate power between the individual absolute and total mass . The fashion was somehow responsible for engulf and neutralize the dandyism: the modern society has established as a sort of body of equalization is intended to establish a balance between the need for automatic singularity and the right of all to meet it " .
The first question, then, is this: it is possible to speak of dandyism, statement of originality and uniqueness within the fashion industry, which by its calling is directed to the most reproducible model, or at least to a specific market segment?
The second question concerns the phrase "pretty dandy." You can use the term "graceful" in the case of the dandy, a figure that has produced a scandal in its history, played with the challenge to the limits of social rule, until the breach? For
groped to answer these questions I think it is necessary to review briefly the history of dandyism. In England at the end of the eighteenth century, appears, in the high society of London, a blue frock coat, a tie immaculate, starched, the tight cream trousers, and high boots with flaps, all worn by the 'arbiter elegantiae "par excellence: Lord Brummell, known as Beau ( the 'beautiful'). It is the elegance of who plays himself, who "lives and sleeps in front of a mirror" (Baudelaire). In his meteoric rise in society, Brummell became a director and friend of the regent king, George IV, Prince of Wales. But the Beau, the impertinence personified elegant, does not recognize the sovereignty of anyone, much less the sovereign - aspiring dandy - that Brummell is terrible, sometimes coming to embarrass him in public with some subtle joke: "Bend over, Brummell, before the king? Not so, could crease the costume. " When the ruler tries to imitate his friend, inventing the 'unbuttoned vest', fashion that is not followed by anyone but by courtiers, servants, waiters, teamsters, in short, the snob.
Let us pause a moment on the word snob is often inappropriately applied over the dandyism: snob comes from the Latin sine ennobled and means "devoid of titles of nobility." According to Thackeray (The Book of Snobs, 1945), the snob is someone who felt less physically, trying to hide under the guise of the slicer: characterizes the principle of emulation, imitation a model. The snob reproduces the external signs of social class and reference this imitation of the model shows a desire to belong to that class. The dandy is the opposite of a snob. Lord Brummel said that they preferred to surprise rather than pleasure. Each company had its appearance in amazement, every bounce of his jokes in conversation as an ipse dixit, every solution of the clothing spread like a wave. It reminds one of his famous quip directed to the Prince of Wales was at the park with a friend, who stopped to greet the prince strong Brummel asked his friend: "Who is your fat friend?" ("Who is that your fat friend ?). Insolence Similarly, provocative, it was unthinkable for a snob. The central point of difference between a snob and a dandy who is the snob, in the process of assimilation of models, combining tends to uniformity, the dandy accentuates the separation. The snob seeks consensus, is intended to be integrated into a privileged social class, the dandy caused a scandal, it increases the social distance, isolation tents. The posh part of the difference and seeks equality, the dandy from the equality part to make difference. While the snob is fully functional within the bourgeois world, the dandy digs an abyss of difference to fall into it, until his death. Brummell, in voluntary exile in Paris to escape by gambling debts, he died insane in a hotel, at the end of one of the frequent receptions imaginary which had invited all the English nobility.
Around the second half of the nineteenth century, dandyism is more alive in France, where the dandy becomes the exponent of a culture of appearance and the diversity that reveals strong connections with the artistic and literary movements. Baudelaire and the most significant figure (1821-1867). Among the pages of Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863) we read: "We do call refined, amazing, beaux, lions or dandies, all from the same origin, all share the same character of opposition and rebellion all are representatives of what is best human pride, of this need, too rare today, to combat and destroy triviality ... ". Baudelaire sees in dandy copy of a new spiritual aristocracy, which appears on the social scene is not so with the determination of a species on the rise as with the pride of an endangered species: "... the last flicker of heroism in decline ... a setting sun, which declines as the star ... superb, without heat and full of melancholy. " The dandy is opposed to the "old", represented by the rites of the old aristocracy, nobility, and the "new" ambiguous values \u200b\u200bof the emerging of a society on the road to democracy.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the most representative figure of dandyism is Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). With him, the offense becomes dandistica sex scandal. The sentencing of Wilde in 1895 in two years' hard labor for violating the criminal law that codified moral rules in sexual matters, is an ice shower for aspects of sexuality atypical fashion, until now almost accepted, provided always in due form of " controlled transgression. "
After this brief and incomplete overview of the phenomenon dandistico, we try to answer the two questions raised by reading the article Espresso.
As suggested by Barthes, fashion and dandyism are two incompatible social phenomena. Research In dandy's extreme originality, the emergence of the "masculine singular" in the fashion provides a reproducible model. The dandy is produced as a work of art, who lives in his aura of uniqueness, is a phenomenon that at the time of mechanical reproduction of works of art, it is difficult to revive. The consumer society only allows the imitation of models, being fashionable by the adoption of the various regional proposal. The fashion from this point of view, is a phenomenon that most snobbish dandy. The fashion for most of its history, it is characterized, in fact, that process of diffusion that Veblen in his work The Theory of the Leisure Class, called "trickle down effect", drip effect. In other words, the fashion spread in society, "dripping" from top to bottom: the fashions were thrown from the upper classes, only to be taken slowly from below. Emulation, however, as we have observed, what characterizes snobbery: it is the illusion that carry the outward signs of the upper class can produce the magic of a membership in fact denied. Today, talk of spreading the fashion for "dripping" from top to bottom no longer makes sense. The parties are often reversed, and the fashions of the street, the popular ones (... if we think of Jeans) enter the sphere of fashion, upsetting the top-down paradigm. But beyond the up-down direction, the fact is that fashion is always playing a model, never speaks in the plural the singular.
Turning now to the question on the relationship dandyism-fashion, I think we can respond by saying that fashion is a close relative of snobbery, but not dandy.
Regarding the second question concerning the expression pretty dandy, I think it's a real oxymoron (more or less like saying "hot ice"). Use the graceful expression, it means to speak of a sense of proportion, of harmony. In fact we are talking about in the right measure of creativity / predictability, new and deja vu. But the search for the dandy wants to inspire awe, playing with the extreme limits of the rule, sometimes pass it up the scandal. There is no sense of measure that refers to the category of "classic", the dandy is baroque. It must be said that today was a very hard life dandy: in a context where everything is colored with deja vu, in fact, surprise is the art more difficult, if not impractical! For the dandy there is no possibility of grace ...
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