Fri Nov 30, 2007 6:07 pm
First of all, greetings from a new forum participant.
Gruto writes: “Hmmm, I am not sure: is a blazer more formal than a tweed jacket?”
Ca va sans dire! A proper blazer with metal buttons and navy blue plain fabric (worsted, say) is certainly more formal than even the most austere but still, typically, “organic-colored” and “textured “ tweed jacket. I would go as far as to say that a blazer (worn with semi-formal trousers) is as formal as most tweed suits.
MTM writes: “Part of being a dandy is breaking the rules creatively though, no?”
Gruto answers: “Or to follow the rules like nobody else. Wasn't that what Brummell did: perfecting rather than inventing?”
I think a dandy is simply a man with an exquisite, cultivated sense of clothing and quality but perhaps (to average men) excessive or at least noteworthy interest in the clothes he wears. I think by definition almost anyone posting regularly on this site is a bit of a dandy. Naturally, I do not mean it pejoratively. A dandy is not synonymous with a fop.
Of course, someone in control of a medium can afford the occasional, well-considered flourish. The odd broken ‘rule’. But a dandy is not a peacock.
Beau Brummell was famously fastidious about quality )of cut, drape, etc.) and, to our eyes, would have appeared quite conservative. I.e., he helped popularize a much less flamboyant costume for men,, much darker sober floors people nowdays seem to think he wore frilly floral stuff. Not at all. A modern equivalent of BB might be, say, Ralph Lauren (I mean the designer, not the RTW clothes they sell). in terms of a very constructed, internally consistent, even ‘hermetic’ aesthetic.
