Russian ‘Petit Maître’: Occupational Hazards

Dandies, petits maîtres, muscadins: Russia's men of fashion were known by many names. Historically, there were different words in Russian denoting the man of fashion. The first words in use included ‘shchegol’ (fop), ‘petimetr’ (petit maître), and ‘fert’ (coxcomb). Times changed, new words appeared, yet beaux always strove to look their best, arousing distrust in some, and admiration, in others.

The origins of Russian dandyism can be traced back to the eighteenth century. Let us begin by taking a closer look at Russian dandies of this period. Here is the typical portrait of the man of fashion – Prince Kurakin, who had a nickname ‘diamond Prince’, so fond was he of luxurious costumes, richly decorated with diamonds and precious stones.

All of Kurakin's actions were highly typical of the eighteenth-century man of fashion. For him the harmony of the details of his costume was the basis of his spiritual tranquillity and feeling in control. One might remember here the ironic saying of R.W. Emerson, who once declared that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inner tranquillity which even religion is powerless to bestow. His album is not unlike Journal de Toilette of Mr.Le.V. Kurakin behaved like a classic aristocrat, using fashion as a sign of his high status, wealth, and economic ability to manage his personal property to the greatest effect. Thus, an involuntary neglect of trifles equalled for him for a symbolic loss of status that left him feeling exposed, almost naked.

In this story there is also something else curious – the tone of the narrator.

When we speak of dandies, what images go through our minds? In our imagination, the dandy is an elegant man, impeccably dressed, perhaps wearing a dinner jacket and bow tie. He smokes a smart pipe, his unhurried gestures are languorous, lazy. His smile is condescending. What is it about dandies that instantly captures our attention? To this day, the dandies possess in our eyes a mysterious charisma; they are often seen as eccentric aesthetes, sharp dressers, capable of the most brazen, unexpected actions.

Who are the dandies? Larousse dictionary offers the following definition: A dandy is ‘a man who affects supreme elegance in his toilet, his manners, and his tastes’. Yet is dandyism really but an elegant pose? Nothing but a fashionable gesture, a chic lifestyle? The nineteenth-century dictionary compiled by Felix Toll provides a less glamorous, yet more specific definition. A dandy, it suggests, is a man ‘always dressed according to the latest fashion, of high birth, possessing sufficient income, and good taste’. Dandies, unsurprisingly, have long been associated with good taste and good breeding. A great many of them, indeed, were of noble birth: recall Count d’Orsay, Count Robert de Montesquiou, the Duke of Windsor. Yet others, originally, were of bourgeois background, including the founder of the tradition Beau Brummell.

Besides always being smartly dressed, dandies are famous for their manners conforming to a special code of conduct, and their costume is merely part of a bigger, well-structured system. So, let us formulate a working definition of the dandy as a fashionable male who achieves social influence by distinctive elegance in dress and sophisticated self-presentation.

In my research, I focused on fashion, literature and lifestyle – areas which, upon closer study, appear more interconnected than one might suspect, and detailed analysis reveals a multitude of unexpected links. On this entrancing journey, we will be concerned not only with fashion but also with many other aspects of everyday life, such as corporeality and hygiene, codes of conduct, practical jokes, high society scandals, notions of charisma and vulgarity. We will probe the origins of the principle of slowness and examine the roots of the dandy minimalist aesthetic. Our particular attention will go to contemporary dandyism, the tailors of Savile Row, and to the Sapeurs of Africa.

Where will we source our knowledge, to find reliable accounts of this appealing, yet also ephemeral world?

Brummell: Constructing the Legend

The life of Beau Brummell remained a subject of unfailing interest to high-society gossips, memoirists, and biographers. Most writers tended to focus on the Beau's life in England, with its clear social triumphs and fame. His twenty-four-year stay in France, of course, was a different matter. If the English period was relatively straightforward and entertaining to document, the time in France, for most, was significantly more challenging to follow.

Brummell's main biographer, Captain William Jesse, on the other hand, knew the Beau only in France, and most of his two-volume work focuses on the French period. Jesse and Brummell met in February 1832 in Caen, where the Beau was serving as Consul. For his biography, Jesse attempted to gather additional information on Brummell's life in England, yet that period remained far more scantily covered than the subsequent years. Jesse's tone, in his book, might appear contradictory. A meticulous chronicler akin to Goethe's Eckermann, in recounting his hero's London triumphs with evident approbation, he seems careful to note every word and gesture. Describing the ageing dandy's failures, however, he shifts to a different register. Frankly critical, in the final chapter, Jesse attempts to draw a series of moralistic conclusions reminiscent of Victorian attacks on vanity. His hero, he supposes, will soon be forgotten: ‘…it is greatly to be dreaded, … that posterity will hardly accord to George Bryan Brummell one line in the annals of history’.

Thanks to the French writer and dandy Barbey D’Aurevilly and Brummell's new Gallic admirers, however, in the middle of the nineteenth century the Beau was far from forgotten. His life was seen as the aesthetic manifesto of dandyism: he was venerated as a hero. In his ‘Treatise on Elegant Living’ of 1830, Balzac created a canonical image of Brummell as the teacher of all men of fashion. In 1845, Barbey D’Aurevilly used the Beau's biography to develop a philosophy of style. To this day, his treatise remains perhaps the most authoritative and well-written text on dandyism. Brummell’s years in France are not well covered, Barbey clearly (and rightly) preferring to study dandyism by focusing on the period of its growth. Thanks to his treatise, the legend of George Brummell became part of European culture. Later, Barbey's study would be taken up by Baudelaire: in 1863, the poet mused on dandyism in his collection of essays ‘The Painter of Modern Life’.

Three Periods of Nineteenth-Century European Dandyism

In the development of European dandyism, three significant periods should be outlined. The first, in Britain, covered the opening decades of the nineteenth century. The central figure here, naturally, was Beau Brummell, who departed for France in 1816. Through Brummell, the dandy image found its complete expression in corporeality, dress, and behaviour, as a new, understated, and neoclassical aesthetic of male dress emerged. Due to his authority as arbiter of fashion, Brummell was able to instate the Great Masculine Renunciation, a minimalist trend which came to dominate the first third of the nineteenth century.

Equally significant was the particular dandy rhetoric of performative behaviour, developed by Brummell, whose actions and gestures were automatically woven into the fabric of culture. The aesthetics of late Romanticism had already prepared the ground for social acceptance of individual creative fancy. Brummell's witticisms and sudden stylistic ‘coups’ invariably became the stuff of anecdotes and legends, forming a new layer of urban folklore. His self-fashioning practice was subsequently taken up and imitated by his many followers and admirers. In the Regency years, the main ‘rules’ of dandy behaviour, and norms of hygiene and corporeality, came into being. Finding its expression primarily through social practice, British dandyism of the first period mainly consisted in showing off and perfecting one's dress, manners, general appearance, and, ultimately, one's entire way of life. The dandy code of behaviour was flexible, leaving ample room for play, and disruption of social convention through practical jokes, scandal, insolence, and cutting.

In the late 1820s, the literary canon of dandyism began to form with the fashionable novels published by Henry Colburn. The silver fork novels, in which the main heroes were often dandies, came to be seen as textbooks in good manners and social etiquette. Following the sensational success of the series, dandies became firmly established not only as a social group, but as literary characters, with their clubs, salons, balls, and opera coming to be seen as familiar settings. Fashionable novels offered muchdesired opportunities for ‘virtual’ aristocratism, with all necessary information on aristocratic manners and high society living.

In the 1830s, however, the development of dandyism began to be impeded by conservative trends emanating from publications such as Fraser's Magazine.

Oscar Wilde: The Dandy-Aesthete

Penning his provocative aphorisms, Oscar Wilde set out to shock bourgeois society with his manifesto of a self-confident Aesthete. Perhaps unexpectedly for him, however, longstanding associations with the genre came into play, with readers seeing the aphorisms as stemming from a solid cultural tradition. British humour had long sanctioned light-hearted sarcasm even on the gravest of topics, and the witticisms of high-society eccentrics were accepted as a necessary rhetorical accompaniment to the ceremonial rituals of salon conversation.

Aphorisms concerning fashion, naturally, also possessed their own associations: through George Brummell and his undying fame, they were commonly linked with early nineteenth-century dandyism. In fashionable novels and treatises, large collections of maxims on good taste and the art of dress did not appear out of place. With its laconic form, which suited the dandy principle of minimal energy expenditure, the aphorism was seen as the perfect dandy genre. Wilde, furthermore, contrived to lend dandy aphorisms a new air of conceptual elegance and philosophical paradox. Inspired by the works of Walter Pater and John Ruskin, he attempted to render their ideas on pure art through more accessible expressions, thought-provoking, yet entertaining. Encountering his maxims, even the poorly educated paused to think. The amusing nature of his paradoxes caused readers’ attention to focus, whilst relaxing at the same time.

In any paradox, one encounters a counterpoint, a meeting of conflicting interpretations. As many of Wilde's aphorisms are uttered by his characters, the possibility of multi-layered readings is infinitely multiplied. Creating a deliberate distance between himself and the speaker, Wild plants his paradoxes in ambiguous style.

‘Entelechy’ is a philosophical term meaning the realization of a thing, usually to the potential immanent to it. Could there be an entelechy to the dandy? The first objection to be raised to this question is in the famous warning made in the first treatise on the dandy by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, that the dandy is vexingly hard to define. True enough, the dandy is the definition of a sartorial class – and a mode of being – that resists archetypes and reducible elements. But has the dandy evolved, like some organism, to define itself more promptly and more acutely?

In the cultural frame of nineteenth-century dandyism certain strategies were developed which assured this entelechy – actualization of dandyism as form-giving cause, smooth functioning of the dandy style in the future. In order to comprehend the contemporary developments of dandyism we must briefly outline the following strategies:

• (1) Dandyism arose as the wave of Modernity swept over society, when fixed professional and social roles had broken down and upward mobility and the ability to adapt and switch had become a condition for success. The strategy of effective selfpresentation and the principle of chameleonism legitimized changes of social masks and helped ambitious young people move upward. The inner connection between dandyism and modernity is evident in the fact that today as well dandyism is inseparable from modern urban culture and all its institutions – cafes, flânerie, advertising, and shopping.

• (2) Another strategy is the ability to keep a distance that emphasizes the restricted access to the circle of the selected affiliates. The dandy always skilfully underscores his membership in an elite minority, whether the closed circle of the aristocracy or Bohemia. This is the source of the cold politeness that can instantly change to irony. Inaccessibility, snobbery, and the strategies of refusal are the instruments for maintaining an estranging distance. The Guermantes did not immediately invite the young Marcel into their home, and Beau Brummell was a master at ‘not noticing’ unsuitable people.

Connected with this is the standard criticism of vulgarity as consisting first of all in easy accessibility and second, excessively crude and direct strategies to create an impression. A liking for proverbs and loud colours in one's dress (an attribute of vulgarity according to Lord Chesterfield) could be compared to head-on statements, whereas the dandies’ indirect messages are far more effective.

The Dandy's Body

In his 1821 essay ‘On the Look of a Gentleman’, the English essayist and critic William Hazlitt offers a fascinating description of the true gentleman:

This description fully works for the corporeality of a dandy. Of huge value both from a cultural and an anthropological perspective, Hazlitt's canon describes the nineteenthcentury ideal: a gentleman able to use and control his body as one would a precise and sophisticated instrument. At ease and free, he is adept at showcasing his body to pleasing effect. Following this somewhat general introduction, Hazlitt proceeds to go into more detail:

From these aphoristic descriptions, we may deduce how Hazlitt perceived the distinction between a dandy and a gentleman. For him, the dandy was ‘the fine gentleman’, one who exhibits particular elegance.

Chameleonism

Dandyism is frequently manifested in the art of completely transforming external appearances, that is, the various means by which individuals change their personal style and ultimately their way of life. It is the art of the makeover in all its possible variations, the ability to change masks, poses and decors, to behave according to a given situation and desired scenario.

Thus, the late nineteenth-century aesthete and dandy Count Robert de Montesquiou- Fezensac (1855–1921) liked to arrange lavish masquerade balls at which the women could dress as Marie Antoinette's ‘shepherdesses’ and the host arrayed himself variously as Louis XIV, Louis of Bavaria, or Plato. Invitations were sent out on vellum paper, and the count personally saw to all the details of the menu, the house and garden decorations, the entertainment program, and the fireworks. Montesquiou’s adeptness at making striking changes in appearance is also evident in photographs, where he appears now as the Sun King, now as an oriental sheikh, now as an automobile driver in a leather jacket. These were genuine metamorphoses, journeys in time and space through skillful reincarnations. The ideology of the dandy make-over is based on a very essential principle of nineteenth-century dandyism, namely complete ‘chameleonism’. The chameleonic dandy transforms his life into a self-fashioning workshop, designing not only his outer appearance and roles, but also his scenarios, situations, and material surroundings. The dandy's chameleonic transformations are implemented through the principle of artificiality that is so characteristic of European decadence. For the aesthete, the artificial is always preferable to the natural – recall Oscar Wilde's aphorism:

Following this logic, the writers and dandies Théophile Gautier, Baudelaire, and later Sir Max Beerbohm wrote essays in praise of cosmetics. Cosmetics and outer looks function as a removable guise, a convenient mask, an occasion for an elegant theatricalized game. The experienced dandy uses the makeover to manipulate opinion, while laughing deep down at the gullible ‘interpreters’ of his appearance.

The notion of chameleonism in nineteenth-century culture is connected with Romantic irony. The insightful philosopher Friedrich Schlegel regarded Romantic irony as the highest manifestation of human freedom.

Rules of Behaviour

From the very outset, dandies were at the forefront of fashion. Yet, their fashion encompassed not merely a style of dress, but a clear behavioural model which supposed that one's entire life was lived according to a certain code. Gradually, these norms turned into an element of social etiquette; a criterion which showed whether or not a man was a true dandy. The perfect dandy's manner was an exercise in ability to instantly and seamlessly change and adapt. Certain dryness with an element of affectation, haughtiness combined with deference: all this was to be exhibited with effortlessness and grace, yet in reality, the behavioural code was based on firm principles. For the true dandy, life was mercilessly governed by a complex system of norms. These could perhaps be reduced to three principal laws: ‘Do not show surprise’, ‘Whilst maintaining an indifferent attitude, act in an unexpected manner’, and ‘In society stay as long as you need to make an impression; and as soon as you have made it – depart.’

Let us examine these principles in more detail.

(1) The first rule, ‘nil admirari’, (let nothing astonish you) decrees that a dandy must, above all, maintain his composure. This norm prompted Baudelaire to compare dandies with the Stoics, and to see in dandyism something like a form of religion. The principle in fact derives from the ancient maxim ‘nil mirari’ (‘do not be surprised at anything’) or, in its fuller form, ‘nil admirari’ (‘never show admiration’). A classical variant of this principle is to be found in the poetry of Horace:

According to Babichev and Borovsky,

Antique minds saw astonishment as linked to admiration. The willingness to experience and to express surprise and admiration supposes openness to all of life's pleasures and temptations, and, consequently, a lack of self-sufficiency.

Apollos in Double-Breasted Coats

Tracing the roots of the classic men's suit, we inevitably find ourselves returning to early nineteenth-century England. The strict canon of male elegance developed by English dandies still retains much of its influence today; yet in those times, their style was seen as a radical break with tradition. What were the striking differences that distinguished the new canon of dandyism from the tastes of the previous era?

Delving into this intriguing matter, we may find ourselves revisiting the history of European costume. The dandy appeared as a fashion type from the mid-1790s in England. The nearest ancestors of the Dandy were the British Beaux and Macaroni of the eighteenth-century, preferring vibrant colours and sparkling fabrics (Figure 2). The precursor to dandy style is late seventeenth-century male dress: around that time, the buttoned justacorps overcoat emerged as a universal element of male clothing (in French, its name ‘surtout’ literally means ‘over everything’). This was usually worn with short full trousers, stockings, and a long vest. Habitually half-buttoned, the vest concealed the wearer's waist. The shirts with their soft collars allowed for the use of neckerchiefs, which would later be followed by ties. All this together, justacorps, vest, shirt, tie, and trousers, formed the basic model of male dress.

The most striking and artificial-looking elements in late seventeenth – early eighteenth-century male costume remained, of course, the wigs and heels, remnants of the Rococo era. Overall, the most conservative aspect of contemporary men’s fashion was perhaps the pear-shaped silhouette itself: decidedly at odds with later trends, it remained in vogue until 1780. Narrow across the shoulders, justacorps were frequently made without collars, as these would inevitably be covered in powder and pomade from wigs. At the same time, the lower half of the body was exaggerated by the full, spreading tails of the justacorps, which sometimes included whalebone rods sewn into them to preserve their shape.

The focal point of the male silhouette was thus inevitably the stomach, protruding above the low-cut trouser waist. The boundary between short, full trouser leg and stocking, decorated as it often was with a bow or buckle, split the leg visually in two, making even tall gentlemen appear shorter. The resulting effect was a pear-shaped outline, appearing almost to encourage plumpness in the stomach area, much to the satisfaction of the portlier gentlemen.