The dandy at dusk : taste and melancholy in the twentieth century

This volume presents dandyism—the embodiment of aesthetic and intellectual ideals—from its origins with Beau Brummell to its major twentieth-century representatives. Author Philip Mann dispels the myth that dandyism centers upon vanity through portraits of the first dandy—Regency England’s Beau Brummell—and six twentieth-century figures: Austrian architect Adolf Loos, the Duke of Windsor, neo-Edwardian couturier Bunny Roger, eccentric writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp, French film producer Jean-Pierre Melville, and New German Cinema savant and “inverted dandy” Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He chronicles their style, identity, influence, melancholy, and often untimely demise, using a mélange of photography, biography, and anecdote. Weaving their stories into an extensive and entertaining history of tailoring and men’s fashion, he offers incisive perspective on the dandy’s aesthetic concerns, pensive nostalgia for the golden Edwardian era, and nonchalant persona. He contextualizes the relationship of dandyism to homosexuality and to modernism, while simultaneously portraying the cultural development of a century punctuated by two world wars and social upheaval. "Philip Mann chronicles the relationship of dandyism and the emerging cultural landscape of modernity via portraits of Regency England's Beau Brummel - the first dandy - and six twentieth-century figures: Austrian architect Adolf Loos, the Duke of Windsor, neo-Edwardian courtier Bunny Roger, writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp, French film producer Jean-Pierre Melville, and New German Cinema enfant terrible and inverted dandy Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He blends memorable anecdotes with acute analysis to explore their style, identity and influence and interweaves their stories with an entertaining history of tailoring and men's fashion. The Dandy at Dusk contextualizes the relationship between dandyism, decadence and modernism, against the background of a century punctuated by global conflict and social upheaval."--Publisher description A chronicle of dandyism and decadence from Regency England to the late twentieth century