The Chap - Thomas Crown Affair

Excerpts from my article on The Thomas Crown Affair in the most recent issue of The Chap magazine.

...he makes a series of telephone calls to various men in skinny ties, pork pie hats, and sunglasses. It is clear to the viewer at this point that he’s either masterminding a heist or managing a ska band… 

...He has a telephone in his sauna, a hidden bar in his bookshelf, and a god-awful plaid sofa set that looks like it was upholstered with Walkers shortbread boxes. He serves brandy in snifters the size of his head and smokes cigars the size of…well, very large cigars indeed. He’s prone to maniacal spasms of laughter, he likes to drink scotch while looking in the mirror, and he owns a bright orange bathrobe which suggests that he may have skinned a Muppet… 

...His beach attire includes a safety-orange shirt unbuttoned to somewhere near his bellybutton, a pair of denim shorts with a two-inch inseam, and a big gold medallion lost in his blonde chest hair like a Spanish doubloon beneath the sand…

More Press for "I am Dandy"

Last Sunday, October 20th, we had our second New York book event at Against Nature, the shop which I manage. As always, Rose has an excellent summary with beautiful photos over at The Dandy Portraits.

The big event of the night was when legendary New York Times street style photographer Bill Cunningham showed up and took some photos of the party. Rose and I were thrilled yesterday to find ourselves on the Evening Hours page of the Sunday Times.

An excerpt from the book - the profile of Dr. Andre Churchwell, pictured above, third from left - is featured in this month's issue of The Chap, along with a profile of yours truly! You can't read it online so you'd better go order a copy.

Esquire's blog did a very nice write-up of the book.

And GQ's blog featured a few of my favorite looks from the book.

Our friend at the Fine Young Gentleman wrote about the Bergdorf Party.

And Buffalo Dandy wrote a nice review of the book.

I'm sure there will be more press coming, especially because Rose and I both have a few events coming up:

On Tuesday, November 5th I'll be reading from the book at the Freerange Nonfiction Reading Series at Culturefix on the Lower East Side.

The following night, Wednesday, November 6th, I'll be judging Literary Death Match at Cake Shop.

And the following night, Thursday, November 7th, Rose and I will be signing books and celebrating with our friends (and newlyweds!) Matt and Enrique at The Fine and Dandy Shop. RSVP now!

And on November 18th, an exhibition of Rose's photographs will open at the National Arts Club, with a party to celebrate.

We hope to see you all in the coming weeks. Stay dandy!

The Chap: Bohemians

In the latest issue of The Chap, I discuss bohemianism - the ultimate anti-dandyism. Below is a small excerpt.

As the great decadent siècle came to its fin, the influence of the dandies had waned. Oscar’s ignominious tumble down the ladder leading from stars back to gutter had soiled the archetypal aesthete’s velvet reputation – to be an elegant man was to be suspect, to be an elegant artist unconscionable. So it was that a new generation of poetry and paint-brush poseurs had to forge a new fashion which bespoke their anti-establishment attitudes. The green carnation in one’s lapel was old hat sartorial subversion – the new subversion required actual old hats, preferably big floppy ones of Continental provenance.

Into this tightly-laced world leapt the Bohemians with gypsy-inspired bravado. Their de facto suzerain, the painter Augustus John, led the way:
 But now a new kind of exhibitionism was born; in its way, as exact and conscientious as my father’s cult of the clothes-brush; a kind of inverted Dandysim. If my shoes were unpolished, they were specially made to my own design. If I abjured a collar, the black silk scarf that took its place was attached with an antique silver brooch which came from Greece. The velvet additions to my coat were no tailor’s but my own afterthought, nor were my gold earrings heirlooms, for I bought them myself: the hat I wore, of a quality that only age can impart…My abundant hair and virgin beard completed an ensemble which, if harmonious in itself, often failed to recommend me to strangers. 

The Chap: The Prince of Whales

The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the Chap Magazine on the fat dandy Prince George IV:

...While the crowned heads of Europe were sweating at the thought of separation from their royal torsos, George IV, then Prince of Wales, saw a singular opportunity presented by the revolution in France. Along with the refugee noblemen arriving at Dover came some of the greatest unemployed chefs in all of Europe, and the hungry Prince was ready to put them through their paces. The aristocratic English diet at the time was centered on heroic portions of beef, and the Prince himself, in his typical pre-Brumellian attire of pink and white silk coats and waistcoats, spangled breeches, lacy-sleeved shirts, all embroidered with heraldic devices and flowers, dotted with silver and precious stones, and treated to generous applications of colorful foil, genuine diamonds, and French paste, attended regular dinners at Covent Garden’s  “Sublime Society of Beef-Steaks,” at which he and his vulgarian crew of noblemen would put away several pounds of cow flesh washed down with an ocean of arrack punch....

...It’s no wonder that by the age of fifty the Prince weighed 17 stone, ballooning to over 22 stone by the time he died. He did his best to control his 50-inch waist with whalebone corsets and stays, but it would seem that most of his astounding wardrobe, which included hundreds of suits, thousands of shirts, dozens of elaborate military uniforms, silk bathing gowns, white beaver robes for lounging, astrakhan caps in the Polish style, underpants of black silk, muffs made of Muscovy sable and sea otter, doeskin pantaloons, scarlet flannel waistcoats lined in calico, muslin-and-gold woven handkerchiefs costing about £1800 each at today’s rates, velvet nightcaps, boots with gold and silver tassels, and a dozen different jeweled eyeglass cases, along with thousands of snuffboxes, brooches, clasps, and rings, was outgrown at a ludicrous rate.The impression of a human disco ball – spherical and covered in diamonds – isn’t too far off from the truth. George, now King, spent his later years being helped into the ocean to bathe (infrequently,) by a lever and pulley-operated harness system installed at the Brighton Pavilion and shoved up ramps onto unfortunate horses in order to take exercise (even less frequently.)... 

The Chap: Lesser-Known Dandies

The following are some excerpts from an article I wrote on lesser-known dandies for The Chap Magazine:

...Robert Coates, son of a wealthy English sugar planter in Antigua, came to England with dreams of being an actor. But before Coates ever took to the boards, he made his theatrical debut on the streets of London, glittering from boot to hat in his heirloom diamonds and, when not marching around town with the proud stride of a man trying to catch up with his nose, riding in a two-seater open-topped chariot – the convertible of its day. The vehicle was gilded and shaped like a clam, and he sat up in it, Venus-like, and looked out over the giant silver-plated rooster affixed to the yoke....

...Evander Berry Wall was a New York Gilded Age socialite who boasted that he'd gambled away two million-dollar inheritances speculating on horseflesh at racetracks around the world. His memoir is a catalog of million-dollar friends, thousand-dollar dinners, and long nights spent in champagne-soaked evening clothes...Wall wore mad plaids and was famous for owning 5000 neckties, which he wore “a yard long, wound around twice, and knotted into a bow.”

......[Jacque] Rigaut’s obsession was suicide, a fixation and artistic calling which remained with him until the day he died. He declared with proud Wildean flippancy that “suicide should be a vocation,” and then worked at it until an early retirement at the age of 30...His oeuvre is suitably slim for an obscure dandy, but his legacy in this grand company is assured with the boastfully immortal words: “Try, if you can, to arrest a man who travels with suicide in his buttonhole.”...