A more precise definition of "style" and "elegance"

[NJS]

Luca - in that case, you are quite right: there is no definition. Is that laconic enough to please an Attic spirit?
NJS

[Costi]

Luca, don't worry, one can no doubt stay alive and be well without "it" (you define it as you please, I am clueless).
Now LIVING is something else entirely...

Nicholas, I have a phantasy of someone driving up in the Mini truck, wearing simple things AND be greeted with a sincere "Sir" - not the oleaginous (haha!) kind hoping for some tip, but most heartfelt, as in "I couldn't possibly call him otherwise, no matter the truck and rags"...
(no need to mention how I like your post, I guess... )

[Rowly]

NJS,
I couldn't resonate more with your post ( including similar experiences as those with the guy with the Humber( details not necessary) ).

Next time he would do better: this is an example of 'intelligent effort' in action by 'frail, fallen humankind'. As long as we remain conscious of our own failings and faults, and remain anxious to do better, the fount still springs with the promise of reaching Style. Maybe then, since we can all, always do better, Absolute Style must remain just beyond our grasp as an actual 'trophy'.

I think if we are constantly engaging the wholesome energy of distillation of our spirits towards a better self and our outward expression of this in our dress, manners, etc. shows the green light that work is in progress, but other than this, our goal is not any earthly trophy...because , as Oscar Wilde has suggested,'' We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'' When this positive energy is at work, I think we are approaching style because somehow, it is evident that it is an expression of the genuine spirit of the person. As in Cole Porter's song...

Is it the good turtle soup, or is it merely the mock?
Is it a cocktail, this feeling of joy?
Or is what I feel the real mccoy?

Two people can dress identically..one may have style, the other not. Two people may smoke identical cigars. One is enjoying a smoke...the other is showing off.
I think style exists where the green light is on suggesting ''Intelligent effort'' is in operation.
It does not seek any earthly trophy, as it looks to the stars...therefore it is ethereal and beyond concrete definition. But, I think we can recognise it somehow like the good thought in a well meant gift. Just as I recognise the good thought and Intelligent effort in your well meant post!

[NJS]

When I was about seventeen, I found the following in a library. I am very glad to see that (albeit shorn of the original Greek citations), it is now freely available to all. I believe that it cogently supports the view that Style is a disinterested, internal quality, externally evidenced:

http://bartleby.com/190/12.html

Moreover, as a lecture, it (a lecture on Style in literature) must stand, in its own right, as an example of the very thing that it is seeking to impart: some definition of Style.

Quiller-Couch was the second-appointed King Edward VII Professor of English literature at Cambridge University and it comes as no surprise to me to learn that his lectures were always packed; including by female students, who were largely unrecognized in their degrees; hence his perennial opening address always began (in protest at this): ''Gentlemen''.

On a note of externals: he always wore full morning dress when giving his lectures and, down to the last, in 1944, the coat was (I am told by a very old person who knew him), the very same one in which he had been married over fifty years before.

[lgcintra]

NJS, your enlightened words reminded me that style does not especially relate to clothes. Not at all. Neither about money or cleverness. It has to deal with radiance, Strahlung, interior happiness of the most simple kind.

This is style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y43Oy4G4 ... ata_player

In fancy clothes this guy could be Fred Astaire. Without, he could be just the guy who swoop the street in front of your house. Neither would be better than the other; but both would have style -- and joie de vivre, lots of it.

Hope the link works.

Best
Luis

[NJS]

Luis - Yes, the links works, thanks. We really must make it there one year at least! I agree that Style will often be evident when someone does something very well; whether it is an actual performing art (when we are willing to pay to watch or listen to it done well), or some other activity: from building a garden to building a wardrobe; from cooking to dressing; from driving to shooting, even just walking. In fact, it can be there in doing nearly anything. The example above of the cigar smoked by one man for pleasure and by another to show off is a good distinction; in fact, in some fashion magazines now they just have the model holding an unlit cigar: the best of both worlds they think: the cigar symbolizes prosperity (''Our clothes are for prosperous men'') but, of course ''Neither our models nor our custromers would dream of smoking - because smoking kills!''

That reminds me of a friend's grandfather who was a man of certain habits and he used to finish The Times crossword every morning and he also treated himself, throughout his life, to a single evening bowl of Afrikaans mixture (I think that was the name but I have never found it). He lived to be ninety three; mobile and compos mentis. One morning he finished the crossword and then received the news that his first great-grandson had been born and, happy that he done and seen it all, he then just died. I also like the various stories of men who dropped dead out shooting with friends. Ian Fleming's brother, Peter, was shooting with friends in Scotland and suddenly just dropped dead. Everyone present was so convinced that he had died as he would have wished to die that they carried on shooting!

[Rowly]

The example above of the cigar smoked by one man for pleasure and by another to show off is a good distinction; in fact, in some fashion magazines now they just have the model holding an unlit cigar:

We don't need an audience to enjoy a nice smoke.

Uncle Charles smoked such black twist that at last his nephew suggested to him to enjoy his morning smoke in a little outhouse at the end of the garden.

-- Very good, Simon. All serene, Simon, said the old man tranquilly. Anywhere you like. The outhouse will do me nicely: it will be more salubrious.
-- Damn me, said Mr Dedalus frankly, if I know how you can smoke such villainous awful tobacco. It's like gunpowder, by God.

-- It's very nice, Simon, replied the old man. Very cool and mollifying.
-- James Joyce

even just walking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr4W4H-H ... re=related
Carlos Copello..Masculine elegance in movement--not showing off, but dancing!
'' Not waving, but dancing!''

[NJS]

Rowly - and this is the film clip which introduced the tango to the world beyond Argentina. The added poignancy is that sadly, Valentino's partener, Beatrice Dominguez died before the film was released, aged only twenty five.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_sG5vRKcB0

[Rowly]

Wonderful !

And we are teased with the opening bars of ''Por Una Cabeza'' at the end of the clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ1aTPM- ... ure=fvwrel

I see we are dining on ''The good turtle soup'' today!

[NJS]

Rowly - indeed - well, actually, we are having Aloo Ghobi!

See the length of Valentino's spurs; he didn't make it easy for himself, did he? The sound track is modern and has been made to measure so to speak as the original music would have been played by an orchestra in the film theatre.

As a benchmark for dancing, this clip always makes me feel, in comparison, like a wardrobe-on-wheels out on the tiles!

[Rowly]

As a benchmark for dancing, this clip always makes me feel, in comparison, like a wardrobe-on-wheels out on the tiles!

Well, I sometimes feel like a wardrobe without wheels !

See the length of Valentino's spurs;

To lead the Ouch !--Oh!s --- no doubt

[hectorm]

And we are teased with the opening bars of ''Por Una Cabeza'' at the end of the clip.

Gardel police: actually at the very end of the clip (credits) the song is "Cuesta abajo" (but good job recognizing ¨Por una cabeza¨ with almost nothing).

See the length of Valentino's spurs

Eureka: that´s exactly the tool Mr. Souster is using in the video of the Three Blind Mice thread

[uppercase]

It's all well beyond knowing about, or having, or even wearing, clothes; as Michael and Costi have often said. If you are getting there, you are getting there even when you are totally naked. But, as you go along, then, with intelligent effort, you will improve your appreciation and acknowledgement of all things; different people and their customs bring an expectation of different ways of behaving and dressing.

Re.NJS quote above.

Can a naked man be stylish and elegant?

Are clothes really necessary?

Doesn't this reduce style and elegance to the basics? That is, to the essence of the man himself?

Isn't this the crux of the matter if we are talking about "style" rather than "clothes"?

The answer is Yes.

That is to say, yes, a man can be stylish and elegant naked.

I come by this observation having recently visited the great city of San Francisco in the golden State of California in the democratic United States of America.

Here, I am told, people are allowed to dress or undress as they please and so, they do.

And so, they walk naked in San Francisco. Yes they do. Some. Without let or hindrance or undue bourgeois commentary. I applaud them.

But are they stylish without clothes? Indeed they can be.

I recall one gentlemen walking stark naked down the street wearing just spats, a fedora and sunglasses.

You could hardly ask for a more elegant fellow. He had bags full of style. He was simply taking a stroll down the street with no parody or irony. And why not? It was a sunny mild day.

Slim, trim, lightly muscled, tall, erect, middle aged, well groomed. He'd taken good care of himself over the years which is a tribute in itself.

He was a stylish man. And elegant as well.

[NJS]

uppercase - I think that you have nicely identified and exemplified dignity as a necessary component. The poet Swinburne was very small (apart from his head for which he had to have his hats made) and he was once threatened in the street by a gang of muggers but he talked his way out of the situation and, by dignity and force of personality, he prevailed. On a different level altogether, the wartime Polish-British agent Krystyna Skarbek-Granville was behind enemy lines near the end of WWII, after the Normandy landings but before landings in the South of France (where she was), and she learned that three British agents had been captured and were about to be shot as spies. Having ruled out a Maquis raid on the prison, she decided to go to the French-Nazi police liaison officer and disclose her identity, which put her at very serious risk of execution too. But, unarmed and alone, she was so persuasive that he then arranged for her to see the local Gestapo Chief in charge of the prison and not only did she (again unarmed and alone) by threats of likely retribution and bribes, secure the release of the agents, but the Gestapo Chief basically surrendered himself into her custody and they all drove off to safety behind allied lines. It was described by the officer who recommended her for a decoration as the most extraordinary single-handed coup de main of the War. Maybe it was even more than that.

[Gruto]

The thing that many honorable members forget when they reduce style to a sort of internal force or a relation to oneself, is the surface. Style must have a surface, whatever that surface is a naked body or a bespoke three-piece English suit or just a face.

True, there is an inertia, a signature, a Style, a personality, a peculiar way of shaping the surface, but speaking about that isolated from the surface is like reducing the mechanics of a locker to a key forgetting the keyhole Style becomes interesting when you see how it unfolds in the surface. It is indicative that we use examples of visuality, when we are to explain style. We simply cannot take it away from the surface, because style is also surface.