The Alpha-Flaneur

[Rowly]

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
by
Oscar Wilde

I suppose one man's blue is another man's blues !

[MRJ]

Costi,
I am afraid you misunderstand the British Royal family. The Duke of Windsor may have been loved but I doubt very much he was ever centre of attention in the way you describe or in the way children are in other families. Public service and duty always takes priority within that family, with children coming a poor second - witness how our current Queen left her two preschool children for 6 months after the coronation to tour the Commonwealth. We also know that the Duke had a very difficult relationship with his father. I am not criticising the Royal family, just trying to point out that they operate to a different set of values than we do.
Personally I find the Dukes dress very ostentatious with far too many patterns. He is more peacock than well dressed in my view and I think this may have been a cry for attention

[Costi]

I know what you are saying, MRJ, and I don't disagree. I guess I just don't give too much weight to these theories on childhood relations explaining everything in the development of a human being. In some cases it's true, but often these factors of influence (whose existence is undeniable) lose a lot of power later in life. It's also true that they sometimes mysteriously regain a lot of power towards the end of life...
Had the Duke always appeared as a peacock (always meaning on all occasions, as well as all through his life), then I couldn't possibly disagree. However, most of the pictures we have of him don't show that at all (and it's not just because they are B&W). He could dress exceptionally well with refined simplicity.

I think it is later in life, as Arky remarked earlier, that he veered towards more... liberty in dress. His taste guided him well in this - witness so many inspiring and successful instances of fine dress including a lot of colour and pattern. He also had the remarkable ability to "pull it off". He sometimes went too far and I am sure he was perfectly aware when he did that. But was that meant to call attention, at his age, with his social and marital status? Whose attention and what for?
I think he liked to play. Had he been keen on being admired (and what would be wrong even in this?), he would have made sure he pleased the "audience" and fulfilled its expectations. Instead, he went pretty much against the grain and pleased himself. And he didn't do it all the time - the overwhelming majority of photographic documents show him in perfect sartorial poise, nothing fancy or shouting for attention, yet commanding it by the simple harmony of the whole.
And how does the theory apply to his brother, who was brought up in similar conditions? He was at the antipode with respect to dress and attitude.
At any rate, we would have to get him psychoanalyzed to be sure and even then the results would be a matter of interpretation. I don't doubt his difficult childhood, I just don't believe in a cause-effect relationship between that and his dress. There is much more to his dress in my opinion than the whims of an unloved big child.
Yet I think he did recover something from his childhood later on in life and that was a kind of playfulness that would do good to many, not only in their dress.

[Arky]

Allow me to suggest a different, more jaundiced view.

As I was colorizing that image, I had occasion to look at this man's eyes for a long time. Something kind of like what you are all hinting at stuck out at me: the forlorn, pretty vacuity. He has the vacant, helpless look of someone born with all the opportunities in life but who has squandered them. Spoiled by circumstances, he chose pleasure and lightness over fecundity. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. George W. Bush has the same vacant expression. It is unsurprising that both, lacking a real trajectory and, thus, a substantial moral code or worldview to speak of, played so guilelessly into the arms of fascistic ne'er-do-wells. I don't know enough about either of those characters' histories to make a categorical point, but it hardly seems like evil describes them: it's more like feckless, defanged naiveté, which is uncomfortable to look at.

Hardy Amies talks about how the DoW, in his "memoirs," (whether or not they were ghostwritten) returns compulsively again and again to the subject of clothes, unable to stop himself. It's the symptom of someone who is one-sided at best, monomaniacal at worst. Small wonder that we feel a complex blend of pity, revulsion, skepticism, ire, and something maybe bordering on pathos when we look at this character: it's like Droopy Dog. Look at the last picture Costi posted: it doesn't take a forensic expert to intuit that Simpson holds the reins in this relationship, while DoW is lollygagging along.

To zoom out and connect this to a larger, more pertinent point: I think one of the reasons many, many men feel an almost preternatural distaste for "going too far," becoming "too absorbed" in clothing matters, absorbing oneself in vanity and prettification, is that there is, in the thinking man, almost a built-in mechanism or tripswitch that warns against excess. This mechanism is much stronger in Western culture for complex reasons I am still unraveling; possibly religious history plays a role. We like to disdain the "average man" for being too unconcerned for his appearance and being unstylish -- heaven forfend! -- but the truth is that many men have far more grave matters on their mind and want earnestly to engage in something personally important and of consequence greater than themselves, rather than indulging in sensorial pleasures. The clothes, whether we couch them in an intoxicating blend of rationalizations about history, aesthetics, self-esteem, etc. (all of which may be true at one time or another) -- they're basically a self-oriented pursuit.

When you really come down to it and gaze into "clothing," "style," "fashion," -- call it what you will -- there is something spine-chilling like gazing into the void. There is nothingness. I hope I can articulate this. Have you ever experienced that feeling where you find yourself on a bit of a jag, reading a lot of pictorial magazines about clothing or some photobook on the subject, some "history of the buttonhole" or whatnot, and you start to feel queasy from over-intake? Like, literally numb in the head? When that happens I have to stop, detox, and read some real literature, philosophy, or some WWII histories to really clear my head. Go to a pond and look at iridescent fish. Anything! It's like cracking open Granny's cookie jar and pigging out: you just end up with a stomachache.

This doesn't happen with, say, music, painting, gardens, or other audio-visual pursuits. You can indulge in them but they don't seem to lead to a blanking of the mind. They reward with some kind of inner truth and are fundamentally about more than the sum of their parts. I mean this not in a philosophical way, but from a cognitive dimension: you feel physically well when you pursue that stuff. When you chase and chase and chase after the style fairy, though, you always come back to the starting point. It's like Ouroboros. If you don't watch out, you might end up just eating yourself whole!

Clothing is about itself. It is time-delimited and has a short half-life. It's external raiment. Sure, it contains artisanship and systems of meaning, but it is something that gets us from point A to point B, albeit in an articulated, stylized manner. It even influences social interactions, like the "art" of skincare or the "art" of cocktails. But those things aren't Art as we know it; they're more technique and some facet of quotidian life. This genre cannot transcend the confines of hobbyism. At best, you can insert it as a pebble in the larger Great Wall that is cultural history. Important for the legacy of human memory, but not something that should consume our day to day our make us draw a line in the sand between the style-have and the style-have-not.

This is why we have deep, rumbling, atavistic reactions to extreme dandies and, moreover, why so, so few of them can impart anything beyond stylistic lessons. To gain the stylistic powers of the dandy, becoming real Dandy Totems or Spirits, they have no choice but to be consumed by it. A volcano that grants magic powers: if you dive into it and survive, you emerge with inhuman abilities, but you become horribly transfigured in the process. A kind of comic-book character scenario: you become supra-human, but a mutant. That is why you read these coffee table books and these figures are upheld like Icons: yes, they presented a supernatural acumen for dressing up. But really, they're martyrs.

When we're forced to confront beings who thrive and vibrate solely for clothing (historical dandies or latter-day stylists and fashion world entities), it's like staring into the compulsive overeating gormandizer, as Bertrand Russell called that specimen. They have refined their synapses so far in one direction that it leads to a kind of emotional barrenness and death of thought. That is why we react so viscerally, from some long-forgotten recesses of the soul, and feel that something is wrong. Their actions aren't malicious, but they are, we feel, transgressive against a fundamental human sense that insists on holism and balance. It provokes pity: it's like staring into a smoldering void.

[Costi]

[Arky]

Point...

and counterpoint...


To be honest I feel much like pic 1 after 48 hours of continuous wakefulness. Doe-eyed and strange

[hectorm]

Arky,
well, it seems that continuous wakefulness suits you well and makes you write in a way that is as fascinating to read as reading Malraux. Keep it coming.

[Rowly]

When we're forced to confront beings who thrive and vibrate solely for clothing (historical dandies or latter-day stylists and fashion world entities), it's like staring into the compulsive overeating gormandizer, as Bertrand Russell called that specimen. They have refined their synapses so far in one direction that it leads to a kind of emotional barrenness and death of thought. That is why we react so viscerally, from some long-forgotten recesses of the soul, and feel that something is wrong. Their actions aren't malicious, but they are, we feel, transgressive against a fundamental human sense that insists on holism and balance. It provokes pity: it's like staring into a smoldering void.

Some people are like an earth with no core, and therefore no natural gravitational pull. This requires them to to send every type of bright flare from the surface, in hope to be noticed. This can be with their dress, or in other ways.
They look for constant feedback that they exist. Some of them video document every little event in their lives.This is a video of me watching a video of me videoing myself meeting xyz.Their self image exists in the illusory depths of an unending hall of mirrors. Their absence of holism is held in balance by their absence of reality. It provokes pity because it is pathetic. It provokes irritation because it is an insult to the intelligence of those who are expected not to see through it.

[Costi]

Dandysm is the appearance of Style taken to the extreme and transformed into a false idol. Style, however, is something else altogether. I wrote I don’t think Windsor had it.
Nature is not indifferent to the way it does things. The Universe itself is highly organized and can only look like chaos to someone who doesn’t see beyond appearances. Style is perhaps an inner connection to that order, a natural ability to perceive AND express it, make it manifest. The ability to generate a field of gravity, in Rowley’s words, thus organizing matter and ideas around oneself. It is the antithesis of the void, of inertia, of the Nothing. It makes us feel admiration, we re-cognize it as being true, a superior form of organization. Outer form is not a stranger to substance in nature, they are not disconnected, so why should they be in human life? Pursuing worthwhile endeavours does not preclude an adequate expression of that pursuit, on the contrary. We may CHOOSE to ignore outer form deliberately, but I think our natural tendency is to make substance and form concord. It is what art does. In their wisdom, the Japanese know there is no “Art”, no Western world distinction between “major” and “minor” arts – art is a way of doing things rather than the things themselves ("objects of art"), an approach that can apply to any human activity. There is no immaterial art (not even music), what art does is bridge the world of ideas and the physical world, bringing the order of the former into the latter, making it perceivable through the senses.
Style is the manifestation, the expression of the inner life of the spirit. It is a natural endowment common to all that some choose to suppress out of fear, misperceived self worth, lack of confidence or mere blindness.
Style is not the same as dress or clothes, those are just a few flowers, but Style is in the upward movement of seva: no movement – no flower, no fruit.
The principle of dandyism, severing the expression from its source and overgrowing it in a malignant form of multiplication, is to be found in all arts: in music, in literature; in philosophy, too. It is a disconnected form of intellectualization, because Style is not intellectual, we only use the intellect to understand and serve it. Dandysm is malpractice of Style. The latter, however, is deeply human, it is a natural endowment, it is Nature’s way seeded in us. The universally recognizable power of magnetism of the man of Style has nothing to do with the force of fascination exerted by the dandy on the weaker.

[Costi]

To be honest I feel much like pic 1 after 48 hours of continuous wakefulness. Doe-eyed and strange

I hope you do get some rest...

[Rowly]

by Costi » Sat Jun 16, 2012 11:53 am

Dandysm is the appearance of Style taken to the extreme and transformed into a false idol. Style, however, is something else altogether. I wrote I don’t think Windsor had it.
Nature is not indifferent to the way it does things. The Universe itself is highly organized and can only look like chaos to someone who doesn’t see beyond appearances. Style is perhaps an inner connection to that order, a natural ability to perceive AND express it, make it manifest. The ability to generate a field of gravity, in Rowley’s words, thus organizing matter and ideas around oneself. It is the antithesis of the void, of inertia, of the Nothing. It makes us feel admiration, we re-cognize it as being true, a superior form of organization. Outer form is not a stranger to substance in nature, they are not disconnected, so why should they be in human life? Pursuing worthwhile endeavours does not preclude an adequate expression of that pursuit, on the contrary. We may CHOOSE to ignore outer form deliberately, but I think our natural tendency is to make substance and form concord. It is what art does. In their wisdom, the Japanese know there is no “Art”, no Western world distinction between “major” and “minor” arts – art is a way of doing things rather than the things themselves ("objects of art"), an approach that can apply to any human activity. There is no immaterial art (not even music), what art does is bridge the world of ideas and the physical world, bringing the order of the former into the latter, making it perceivable through the senses.
Style is the manifestation, the expression of the inner life of the spirit. It is a natural endowment common to all that some choose to suppress out of fear, misperceived self worth, lack of confidence or mere blindness.
Style is not the same as dress or clothes, those are just a few flowers, but Style is in the upward movement of seva: no movement – no flower, no fruit.
The principle of dandyism, severing the expression from its source and overgrowing it in a malignant form of multiplication, is to be found in all arts: in music, in literature; in philosophy, too. It is a disconnected form of intellectualization, because Style is not intellectual, we only use the intellect to understand and serve it. Dandysm is malpractice of Style. The latter, however, is deeply human, it is a natural endowment, it is Nature’s way seeded in us. The universally recognizable power of magnetism of the man of Style has nothing to do with the force of fascination exerted by the dandy on the weaker.

What an excellent post! I have nothing more to say on the matter, other than completely agree. Thanks Costi. And thanks to Arky and others.

[Arky]

Well-rested and back for more punishment

Bravo, Costi! Style is humanistic and interpersonal. I am searching for a better word to describe it... as a way, an Art of Living. We fixate on the clothes/aesthetic prong because it is the lowest-hanging fruit on the style cactus. The term has been eroded of meaning, in English at least, through repeated playback of Sinatra tunes where style comes to mean something like pizzazz! If we agree that style penetrates deeper, becoming something like life-style, it allows the person to enjoy a richer material and physical engagement with the world, not to mention human closeness. I have to reflect on this chaos/order point for a bit, though. Humane life-style is perforce personal and subjective and looks beyond systematic ways of ordering things. The way the last 50 years of design, architecture, etc. have gone, we have been conditioned to prize the straight line and rectilinear form over the flourish. Style can still be sloppy.

On the other hand... there is the happy idea of bonsai, or the Japanese garden. Western gardens were of the Teutonic variety, i.e., wild and untamed forests, or the English, i.e., lawns paved in the Capability-Brown style. Maybe I oversimplify, but the Japanese garden always insists on the human hand to control and shape nature to lead it towards an outcome that feels more organic and naturalistic than if left to its own devices: nature has to be "tamed." Unassuming rock paths and mossy growths are the height of order, being carefully inserted to achieve the desired naturalistic effect; the moss expert bends over backwards to ensure that the moss grows just so on a boulder. Nothing is left to chance, and yet it appears the opposite. The human hand becomes a kind of reagent in the catalysis of naturalizing nature.

So if I put this interpretation on your last comment, I think we can agree that in life-style there is a deliberate approach that, through refinement, becomes a subsumed way or manner that transcends technique, eventually becoming one with the doer. But it is probably not innate. There is the hoary, but helpful, Zen notion of the "pointing finger" -- the moon is the destination, but the finger the means of finding it.

Pursuing worthwhile endeavours does not preclude an adequate expression of that pursuit, on the contrary. We may CHOOSE to ignore outer form deliberately, but I think our natural tendency is to make substance and form concord. It is what art does. In their wisdom, the Japanese know there is no “Art”, no Western world distinction between “major” and “minor” arts – art is a way of doing things rather than the things themselves ("objects of art"), an approach that can apply to any human activity. There is no immaterial art (not even music), what art does is bridge the world of ideas and the physical world, bringing the order of the former into the latter, making it perceivable through the senses.

I agree, I agree. I made a crude distinction in my last comment in the interest of making a point, but in truth the binary of
"styleless serious man" versus "superficial peacock" is not totally correct. Still, there does seem to be something in the Western climate, if not the epistemological framework, that insists that someone take the "high road" or the "low road" -- beauty or brains, pick one! Blame museums. Blame something!

As for distinguishing between high or low art, you are right, it is poppycock, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
I began to allude to the bolded comment above but was reluctant to open that can of worms just yet.
At your invitation, however...

Donald Richie, remarking on people commenting that Japanese conceal an inner self behind a "mask" of superficiality,
said: "He...is able to see that all reality is what the West finds merely ostensible reality. Reality is skin deep because there is only skin. The ostensible is the truth. There is no crack between the mask and the face because the mask is the only face anyone ever has -- that crack, which contains irony and wit as well as cynicism, does not exist."

Barthes, in Empire of Signs, made similar comments: what you see is what you get. Sarcasm nearly does not exist. There is no hard sell. Comedy is virtually a running gag and slapstick, a continuation of vaudeville. There is nothing to feel self-conscious about: if it's funny, laugh. Romance is deadly serious without irony and pregnant with furtive glances, candles, and all that jazz.

I like to ask people who express skepticism on this point to name for me the important 20th century Japanese (or East Asian) philosophers: they can't. In a secular climate, the person who has more fun wins; the deep thinker is a head case.

The first-time traveler to Japan is often bewildered: it seems inappropriate to have this much fun.
Everyone is constantly eating, shopping, drinking, soaking in hot tubs: homes have always been small, so taking to the streets is the solution. The out-of-doors is a teeming public space. Remember the ancient French promenade, with people turning out to walk the boulevards? It persists in full force. Vaulted gallerias, practically defunct in Europe except for a few locations in London and Italy, are ubiquitous (many done up in the European mode), and heavily trafficked.
On the other hand, cerebral and conceptual artists never gained much traction. The ones that came of age studying in Parisian cafes with Man Ray et al repatriated and always seemed a little impenetrable. "Why all the fuss?"

Incidentally, there is a strange affinity between Japan and Italy manifested in clothing, food, and other things, even though the religious-historical backdrop is so different. I don't think it is solely because Italy is turned to as a producer of "luxury" -- it is the feeling that the Italians know, on a fundamental level, how to have unbridled fun, and that is an immediate point of commonality. Namely a kind of "life-style" as suggested above, a naturalistic approach to living and a recognition of the material/visual in healthy living. There are also strong byways between Italian and Japanese architects. At least one of them, Hidenobu Jinnai, suggests that there is overlap in the structure of Italian cities and Japanese ones through history: warrens of alleys, the size and spacing of signage, and other things, that fostered a vivid street life and enhancement of quotidian life. I don't know if you can find his books on Venice, but one on Tokyo was published in the UK, I think.

Some people are like an earth with no core, and therefore no natural gravitational pull. This requires them to to send every type of bright flare from the surface, in hope to be noticed. This can be with their dress, or in other ways.

Thank you! Great image. I am enjoying all these scientific analogies to the puzzle. It feels so fresh.

I wonder, do any of you use some little memento mori in your lives? I considered it from time to time, something to keep the mind from drifting, but I always felt too squeamish to, you know, place a skull on my desk

[Arky]

By the way, I guess the problem is that we look at photographs and declare, "He has style!" thereby reducing the equation to the visual appearance and nothing else.......maybe in real life the person is a big jerk

[Costi]

Rowly, thank you.
With your encouragement, I would go even further: lack of Style is a dysfunction. The natural state is to have it and manifest it. We are so good at blocking it... And we get better every day. Some by ignoring, some by overintellectualizing. Style is eminently phenomenological: it has to be lived, experienced. It won't let itself explained. That is why metaphor is the only way to suggest its nature. But metaphor, while offering a more direct access to the actual experience, at the same time departs more from the essence: it shows a facet, never the whole. That is why photographs cannot contain or render Style. They can suggest it, indicate its presence, but hardly make you experience it. Style is a live experience, it cannot be recorded. (Perhaps that's why I like theatre and don't watch movies much lately... not to speak of recorded music! But sometimes photo albums can be nice, even though they can never replace the actual experience.)
The "order" of Style is not the order of the French garden vs. the dis-order of the English one. It is a subtle order relying on the simple principle of subjecting to interior reality, the only "true" one we can experience, and expressing it in "outer" life. The art of living, yes - life as a work of art. And good morning, Arky!

[Arky]

Style is eminently phenomenological

Agree!!

That is why metaphor is the only way to suggest its nature. But metaphor, while offering a more direct access to the actual experience, at the same time departs more from the essence: it shows a facet, never the whole.

The pointing finger!


The best part of having this discussion in the confines a BBS is we don't have to prattle on about it in real life: in real life, we can just open our eyes, and be.