"I am Dandy" Has Arrived!

It’s true: I’ve let this blog lie fallow for too long. But I have a good excuse: “I am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman,” the book I co-authored with photographer Rose Callahan has been published by Gestalten Press and the promotional cotillion has begun! Rose has, admittedly, kept her own blog more up to date than I have, but then again she always does.

First thing’s first: Gestalten’s page for the book is here.

And it can, of course, also be ordered on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. So go buy a copy and put it on your coffee table. Or buy several copies and use them as a coffee table.

The book has only been on shelves for a couple of weeks, but the reviews we’ve seen so far have all been extremely positive. Admittedly, some of them were written by men who are in the book themselves, but to be honest, they were the critics whose opinions we cared about the most.

Hugo Jacomet at The Parisian Gentleman wrote an extensive and very flattering review of the book.

James Sherwood made me blush with his praise.

Sven Raphael Schneider reviewed the book for Gentleman’s Gazette, which is syndicated on the Details Magazine blog.

I’m particularly proud that the brilliant scholar of Dandyism Melanie Grundmann wrote a highly favorable review of the book on her blog.

And Dandyism.net’s Nick Willard had excellent things to say about the book itself before ably fulfilling his duty as a correspondent for that website and intelligently but uncompromisingly reviewing the men in the book for admission into the dandy canon. 

Freshness Magazine did a review here.

DROME magazine wrote about it here.

SocialLife Chicago recommends the book here.

Sydney, Australia’s Le Noued Papillion calls it a “must-have book.”

Only Cool Stuff wrote about it here.

And this post on I am a Dandy Cat proves that the internet is a strange place.

Last week our first book events took place in London. Our big launch party took place on September 17^th at Gieves & Hawkes, No. 1 Savile Row. There was a good turnout, all well turned-out, and the Champagne flowed like, well, Champagne. A commenter on some website criticized the event for being too “self-congratulatory.” Aside from the fact that this person clearly has a poor concept of the entire point of a book launch, I think Rose and I have every reason to congratulate each other and our selves. We’ve worked very hard and we’re excited to see how the fruits of our labor will ripen.

Rose’s post on the event is here.

Gieves and Hawkes posted about it on their blog here.

Dickon Edwards, one of the men in the book, wrote about the event on his blog.

Barima Owusu-Nyantekyi, another of the book’s subjects, wrote about it on his site Mode Parade

Winston Chesterfield, yet another man from the book, wrote about it for Men’s Flair.

Code of the Gentleman covered the event here.

The Vintage Vault at StyleSight covered it here.

The Grey Fox wrote about it here.

The Rake put up a small post.

And, of course, Dandyism.net couldn’t pass up the opportunity for one of their infamous rounds of “Who’s the Dandy?”

Our second London event was a small affair at the beautiful shop of our friend Stephen Hitchcock, tailor extraordinaire.

Rose posted about it here.

As did the Rake.

Rose is currently in Paris for another book event at Cifonelli Tailors, which I unfortunately couldn’t attend due to work, but I’m sure she’ll have many excellent things to post on her own site about it.

In the coming weeks there will be more coverage in mainstream and print media, international television, online videos, and guest blog posts in various places by me and Rose. We’re preparing for our big New York launch party and subsequent events, and I’ll try my best to update this blog more regularly. But no promises – I’m pretty busy being self-congratulatory these days. 

Dandy Photo Book

Photo of Massimiliano Mocchia di Coggiola by Rose Callahan

Obviously I haven’t updated this blog in ages, but I assure you I have a perfectly dandy excuse. For the past few months I’ve been working with the excellent photographer Rose Callahan on a book based on her blog, The Dandy Portraits. I’ve been writing the text to accompany Rose’s beautiful photographs. The book is due out this Fall on Berlin’s Gestalten Press. Rose and I have been working pretty much non-stop since we got the book contract – she photographing beautifully-dressed men and me interviewing them and writing profiles. The process has been as exciting as it has been exhausting. A few weeks ago we travelled to London to gather more material for some of the UK’s greatest dandies.

I’m particularly excited because this book isn’t just a fashion book – it isn’t a survey of menswear. Instead, it’s an exploration of a particular type of man; one obsessed by clothing and dedicated to mastering style. The subjects span ages, races, language groups, and sartorial philosophies. Among them are the most famous trial lawyer in New York City, one of the 20th Century’s greatest journalists, the English lead singer of a Norwegian “Death Punk” band, a pair of cardiologist brothers, a world-renowned barber, a famous interior decorator, a poet, several menswear writers and bloggers, some clothing designers, a handful of artists, a couple of jazz bandleaders and sidemen, and many more. The only think these men have in common is their passion for dressing.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I’ve enjoyed working on it. For more teasing samples of Rose Callahan’s incredible work, please visit her blog at http://dandyportraits.blogspot.com/

The Dancing Marquess

An excerpt from my article in the latest issue of The Chap on Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey:

The Marquess was famously described by Clough Williams-Ellis as “a sort of apparition – a tall, elegant and bejeweled creature, with wavering elegant gestures, reminding one rather of an Aubrey Beardsley illustration come to life.” The Omaha Daily Bee described him more bluntly: “He is a thoroughly effeminate looking young fellow and he may be seen when in Paris walking around with a toy terrier under his arm, the pet being heavily scented and bedizened with bangles and bows. The fingers of the marquis fairly blaze with rings. He presents the characteristics of the Gypsy type.” His lifestyle was no less lavish; one newspaper reported that his bedroom was “draped in mauve velvet, with hanging figures of solid silver. Its ornaments were of filigree and gold, and its tables crowded with bottles of the most costly perfumes. His ‘boudoir’ was of green and gold. He had three valets and a ‘coiffer,’ all of whom earned their high salaries, for it was no unusual thing for this modern Beau Brummel to spend a whole morning ‘working out’ some special scheme of color by dint of combining the effects of neckties, trousers, waistcoats and ‘spats,’ discarding, one by one, such as failed to ‘harmonize.’”...
...In 1901 he hired a company of professional actors at an inflated salary to go on a European tour with him. They travelled with their own orchestra and needed five trucks to carry their scenery and equipment....Paget travelled in a custom automobile modeled after a Pullman railcar, complete with leather furniture, wooden fixtures, and a baroque carved ceiling. The exhaust pipe was modified to spray scent: sometimes violet, sometimes patchouli, sometimes l’eau d’Espagne........But Paget’s most famous act was the “Butterfly Dance,” which earned him the nickname “The Dancing Marquess.” He would perform this at the intermission of his productions, after which he would hand out picture postcards of himself to the undoubtedly bewildered audiences.
Lord Berners was in the audience at one of the Marquess’s “performances” in Munich, and he said that it “came between that of a lady with performing pigeons and a company of acrobats. The theatre was darkened. There was a roll on the drums and the curtain went up on Lord Anglesey clad in a white silk tunic, a huge diamond tiara on his head, glittering with necklaces, brooches, bracelets, and rings. He stood there fore a few minutes motionless, without any mannequin gestures of display. Then the curtain went down again period…The German audience seemed a little disconcerted by the manifestation of British eccentricity.”