21ST CENTURY DANDY
15/01/05 16:57 englandCharlie Allen | News
British Council have a great article on the 21st Century Dandy.
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.
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.
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.
The Gentleman
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.
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The Gentleman
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.
Read More