As I write this, annual suit pageant Pitti Uomo is in full swing, bringing with it the usual onslaught of looks which are best described as menswear at full volume. By the time this reaches you, dear club member, Pitti will be long past, but it’s got me thinking about men’s fashion at large, and what it means to be a dandy.
Tailoring and dandyism were hot topics earlier this year too thanks to the Met Gala, and I’ve generally seen more discussion of masculine clothing in online discourses since. I’m trying to reconcile where I sit in all of this, as someone who cares a great deal about fashion, but does not believe himself to be a dandy, and for whom “menswear” feels more and more like cosplay. Today, an exploration into following or breaking the rules, and why it might be better to do neither.
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The Cary Collection - A truly remarkable collection of vintage and antiques, including an expansive assortment of heritage Americana clothing.
McGregor - Look for vintage Made in USA only, but excellent for lightweight golf jackets and other sportswear.
Sperry - Iconic makers of boat shoes, best these days for their CVO trainers.
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The Modern Dandy
“Dandyism” conjures an image of a certain style of dress, but I intend to broaden that today. We’re not just talking about three piece suits in elaborate colour and patterns, rather about an approach to dress that favours standing out and pushing boundaries.
A fair number of the online fashion creators you follow fit into this category, they have a hobbyist approach to fashion, they think a great deal about their outfits, and construct them to draw attention. Dandyism finds a natural home online, especially on Instagram and TikTok, when you have a split second to grab attention, the loudest or most divisive outfits are the most likely to catch. The general state of contemporary streetwear has seemingly followed suit, we see a lot of bold contrasts, patterns like real-tree camouflage, exaggerated silhouettes, and maximalist accessorising.
The modern dandy, to me, is someone who is well studied in the clothes they wear, but seeks to knowingly subvert convention. They “know the rules to break the rules”, their eccentricity is permitted to them through a demonstrably extensive knowledge of the traditions of menswear.
Menswear as Cosplay
There was a time, not that long ago in fact, when I was a dandy, when I wore camo jeans with navy blazers to university, a jacket and tie to get groceries. Over the past six months or so that’s just disintegrated, and I started to wonder why.
Here’s my thing with this brand of dandyism, it’s fragile. You can see this at Pitti, we end up with a competition of who can break the rules in just the right way to show how well they know the rules. The canon of Western menswear becomes a sort of cosplay, like at a comic convention, and it gets a little square. At the same time, this style of subversion which relies so much on playing ever so slightly outside of the lines without redrawing the pitch, does more to solidify the rules than it does to push back against them.
This sense of cosplay is a trap to be wary of with vintage and heritage clothing, and it’s the same reason that I think “defining your personal style” with some sort of articulation, three words or otherwise, is unhelpful. You’ll end up pursuing an idea of how you should dress, not how you could dress, it’s putting the cart before the horse. I feel that, with menswear in enthusiast spaces, the pursuit of accuracy as decreed by a longstanding code outweighs any discussion of aesthetic preference. I’ve had to interrogate this myself, I’m rather militant when it comes to collar rolls and undarted jackets, and I had to ask myself whether I was simply regurgitating what I understand to be tradition in the ivy canon, or actually expressing a genuinely held aesthetic preference. It feels like the affectations and details of twentieth century mens tailoring are a series of Easter eggs that we reference and then wink at the imaginary camera.
As for how to avoid the dreaded cosplay moniker, the first touchstone is to blend eras, pulling an entire look from one decade is always going to bring some risk. Then, it’s really just a matter of not over-intellectualising, breaking outside of the gaze of a fashion obsessive and making an objective vibe assessment based on aesthetics alone, forget whether a look ticks the boxes of accuracy, whether it follows or breaks the rules, does it look good?
A Dandy no More
I have a deep love for taking energy and passion, the same amount of knowledge that goes into a heavily constructed and formal look, and applying it to very simple clothing. It’s the jeans and t-shirt theory, a dreadful cliche but I do subscribe to it.
However, I’m apprehensive about preaching this, whilst it’s certainly my aesthetic preference, I think it’s an unusual time to be discussing overstatement versus understatement in fashion. I don’t want to accidentally align myself with the “dress classy”, “old money”, AI generated bullshit that shows up on my Instagram FYP. I don’t want to abscond innovation, I want for people to push boundaries and challenge traditions, but I worry that, when pushing the boundaries becomes individualistic competition and IYKYK references, the focus shifts away from subverting a dominant culture. At the same time, I think the nuance that can go into making excellent, simple outfits is hard to communicate through online channels, especially short form video, the fashion we see online skews towards dandyism or divisiveness because their very nature is to attract attention.
I think minimalism has been poisoned over the past ten years, we’ve come to associate it with those all-white, clean line, sterile living rooms, pastiche artwork, and unpopular corporate rebrands. A “minimalist” wardrobe would need to be full of smooth, plain, patternless garments in simple, neutral tones. Through these warmer months I’ve adopted a uniform of checked poplin or madras shirts with light stone chinos, it’s very simple but it doesn’t fit into that “minimalist” aesthetic.
I care a lot about tailoring, I think everyone should have a proper dinner suit, I have strong opinions about tie knots, I like blazers and flannel trousers, but somewhere along the way I just fell out of love with challenging the menswear conventions. As a creative and as a progressive I want to see the goalposts moved, I want traditions to be questioned, but I want it to be done in such a way that invents things that are brand new rather than tugging at the ear of the same clothes we’ve worn for a hundred years. I still delight in seeing the #menswear guys get upset, but I want to find a different avenue than wearing a navy blazer with sweatpants.
“Menswear” as a term feels very concrete, it doesn’t simply refer to clothes worn by masculine presenting people but a specific canon of clothing items taken from the twentieth-century West, we’re in a space now where everything we wear is a remix on these same ideas, getting too caught up in whether a look follows or breaks the rules just doesn’t help anyone. It’s time to go back to basics.
Prep club adjourned, catch you next time.
Camp Mocs / Fashion Principles / BEAMS America / Three Casual Jackets for Summer
Hello! Welcome back to THE RADAR, The Prep Club’s fortnightly mini-magazine keeping you in the loop of what’s hip in the sphere of collegiate threads. You can attend last week’s meeting here, for our latest seasonal vibe check.
Fun read.
It’s interesting that you define the modern dandy to be one that “knows the rules to break them” and studies to subvert convention at the time. From your average person looking into this circle, “we” are certainly breaking modern rules and conventions from their perspective - but it doesn’t seem that is what you are talking about here. No, it seems you are talking about a meta level up - the dandies’ dandy that tries to break the conventions’ broken conventions.
IMO the dynamic you are describe where you start dressing to show off how well you are in the know is fragile, not because there are only so many ways to subvert expectations, but simply because you stop dressing for yourself. That is where I see your point about costumey-ness. There is almost a bell curve on innovating on your style. In between buying “aesthetically marketed” clothing to get validation from others and hyper-curated fits designed to maximize validation from others its the joy of dressing up for yourself.