men's clothing

“The finest clothing made is a person’s skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.”
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I like to see the end of the nineteenth century as a marvelous revolution in dress. The signs aren’t completely evident. We do have some stiff, high-collared Edwardian conventions to get through. Perhaps I can make an analogy with July. We celebrate Old Glory on the fourth and head off for the beach. New waves are coming and we want to be in position to catch them.

Masculine bathing suits, soon to be following by a comparable swimming costume for women, announce the coming liberation. A warm sun beats down on those who wade into the water. The human body can be seen beneath the clothes worn for propriety’s sake.
Once human activity conceives of clothing that can support the body in its exercise, we’re on a road that leads to the future we all take part in. July speaks to us of holidays, vacations, and a break from work. July’s a month for dreaming…isn’t it?

p.s. Fifthy per cent more people viewed the Michael Jackson memorial service than President Obama's inauguration. Never underestimate the power of pop culture...

In France, a new dandy supplanted previous notions of this masculine mode. Count Alfred d’Orsay was a sensation in London and Paris of the 1820s and 30s. His great physical beauty, dandified dress, and elegant manners had men and women stopping in the streets to stare after him. His private life—he came from an impoverished branch of French aristocracy—proved scandalous when he was “adopted” by a wealthy English Earl and his wife, and no one was exactly sure whose boyfriend he was.

The Count’s dandyism was less restrained than Brummell’s. He favored velvets and coats cut with a dash. Like many members of the cult of celebrity, however, his popularity faded before he was ready to admit this was so. While d’Orsay epitomizes the dandy as popular idol, his fall shows just how ambivalent men felt about dandyism. Young boys across France emulated his modishness, but by the end of the 1830s masculine fashion had moved on.

Dandies were viewed with a little more skepticism across the Atlantic. The upheaval in Europe created by Napoleon’s rise and fall brought a steady stream of tailors and would-be dandies to America’s east coast cities. Yet in keeping with a country with more than its fair share of rough edges, the niceties of modish dress were something to regard with suspicion. Nor did it help that the largest showing of dandies regularly turned up in the U.S. Congress.

The ambivalent attitude of men in the New World toward Old World dressing didn’t stop them from pursuing similar fashionable looks. Despite a recent war, the ties between Bond Street and Wall Street remained. American cynicism, however, would be an important ingredient in the changes of the century ahead.

Men’s clothing would never be what it is today without George “Beau” Brummell (1778-1840). This ingenious man, the father of the modern dandy, was initially a court favorite who fell from grace. He was a walking advertisement for the modish man. Although he took only one dip into literature, his reformation of masculine style was transformative.

One of the things I find most interesting, however, is how few portraits exist of him. The one or two of those that have come down to us are actually suspect likenesses. And this in an age when English printmakers were at their most vicious and satirical…

That Brummell’s influence endured throughout the nineteenth century is the subject of an essay by a Frenchman, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly. The Anatomy of dandyism kept the Brummell legend alive. The author’s study of masculine dress taste would prove influential indeed.

Over the weekend, I was engrossed in a murder mystery set in medieval Cambridge. The suspense centered on men who were sneaking around after dark doing nefarious deeds. They masked their identity with their hat, which went by the name of a liripipe. The author never gave a particularly cogent description of this item, so I looked it up in the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Dress. I learned that a liripipe was a 14th century headdress of an eccentric nature—and an important object of masculine fashion. Worn over a gorget, a form of hood and neckpiece, the liripipe was composed of soft tubes of cloth, up to two feet in length, with drooping points. They could be suspended, worn over the shoulder, or wound round the gorget like a turban. Fashionable men went to great lengths to twist the liripipe like a scarf, and drape it in dashing modes. Villains, on the other hand, as my book demonstrated, used it as a means of concealment.

Speaking of concealment (or not), there was a local television story last week about pork barrel monies in the finally-passed New York State budget. $5000 was approved for a group called Men of Exquisite Taste. Anybody know anything about this intriguing organization?