Dandyism In The Age Of Revolution

Download or read book Dandyism in the Age of Revolution written by Elizabeth Amann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-01-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the color of a politician’s tie, to exorbitantly costly haircuts, to the size of an American flag pin adorning a lapel, it’s no secret that style has political meaning. And there was no time in history when the politics of fashion was more fraught than during the French Revolution. In the 1790s almost any article of clothing could be scrutinized for evidence of one’s political affiliation. A waistcoat with seventeen buttons, for example, could be a sign of counterrevolution—a reference to Louis XVII—and earn its wearer a trip to the guillotine. In Dandyism in the Age of Revolution, Elizabeth Amann shows that in France, England, and Spain, daring dress became a way of taking a stance toward the social and political upheaval of the period. France is the centerpiece of the story, not just because of the significance of the Revolution but also because of the speed with which its politics and fashions shifted. Dandyism in France represented an attempt to recover a political center after the extremism of the Terror, while in England and Spain it offered a way to reflect upon the turmoil across the Channel and Pyrenees. From the Hair Powder Act, which required users of the product to purchase a permit, to the political implications of the feather in Yankee Doodle’s hat, Amann aims to revise our understanding of the origins of modern dandyism and to recover the political context from which it emerged.

Download or read book Dandyism in the Age of Revolution written by Elizabeth Amann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-01-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Dandyism in the Age of Revolution, Elizabeth Amann shows that in France, England, and Spain, daring dress became a way of taking a stance toward the social and political upheaval of the period. France is the centerpiece of the story, not just because of the significance of the Revolution but also because of the speed with which both its politics and fashions shifted. Dandyism in France represented an attempt to recover a political center after the extremism of the Terror, while in England and Spain it offered a way to reflect upon the turmoil across the Channel and Pyrenees. From the Hair Powder Act, which required users of the product implications of the feather in Yankee Doodle's hat, Amann aims to revise our understanding of the origins of modern dandyism and to recover the political context from which it emerged. -- from back cover.

Download or read book Slaves to Fashion written by Monica L. Miller and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-08 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slaves to Fashion is a pioneering cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York. It is populated by sartorial impresarios such as Julius Soubise, a freed slave who sometimes wore diamond-buckled, red-heeled shoes as he circulated through the social scene of eighteenth-century London, and Yinka Shonibare, a prominent Afro-British artist who not only styles himself as a fop but also creates ironic commentaries on black dandyism in his work. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora. Dandyism was initially imposed on black men in eighteenth-century England, as the Atlantic slave trade and an emerging culture of conspicuous consumption generated a vogue in dandified black servants. “Luxury slaves” tweaked and reworked their uniforms, and were soon known for their sartorial novelty and sometimes flamboyant personalities. Tracing the history of the black dandy forward to contemporary celebrity incarnations such as Andre 3000 and Sean Combs, Miller explains how black people became arbiters of style and how they have historically used the dandy’s signature tools—clothing, gesture, and wit—to break down limiting identity markers and propose new ways of fashioning political and social possibility in the black Atlantic world. With an aplomb worthy of her iconographic subject, she considers the black dandy in relation to nineteenth-century American literature and drama, W. E. B. Du Bois’s reflections on black masculinity and cultural nationalism, the modernist aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance, and representations of black cosmopolitanism in contemporary visual art.

Download or read book Dandyism written by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly and published by AJ Publishing Company. This book was released on 1988 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a dandy? Carlyle said he was a man whose "existence consists in the wearing of clothes." Isak Dinesen worshipped the freedom of the aesthete as a special Satan. But even these definitions are not enough to contain the dazzling originalities of Lord Chesterfield, Oscar Wilde, George Sand, Max Beerbohm, Baudelaire, Jean Cocteau--all of them dandies. Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly's jewel-like writing on the sensibility of dandyism has never been equaled as the study of life lived as style. His Dandyism, with a new preface by Quentin Crisp, is now back in print in America after an absence of nearly a century. The implication for today's obsession with fashion and personality make this 1845 study of the cult of the self as timely and thoughtful as ever. In the spectacles of contemporary society, the body easily becomes a cultural text. Barbey d'Aurevilly looks behind the mask of English society in the Regency period to show how life can be lived as ironic performance. In his own magnificent performance as a writer one can feel the aroma of manners exuded by the eponymous Beau Brummell who is the star of this miniature portrait of elegant hedonism and spectacular decline. "Brummell was descended from the people of the north, lymphatic and pale, like their mother the sea ...." are the words he uses to describe the Englishman. No wonder his contemporary Lord Byron said he would rather be Brummell than Napoleon. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly himself lived the life of a dandy in an age that was beginning to define our idea of modernist sensibility. He wrote over fifty volumes of novels, short stories, criticism, and letters, one of the most provocative his study of women, The Diaboliques. He was also the model for Des Esseintes in Huysmans' decadent novel Against Nature. Barbey d'Aurevilly died in 1889, at the age of eighty, in utter poverty but surrounded by his Angora cats.--Adapted from dust jacket.

Download or read book The Dandy written by Nigel Rodgers and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An erudite look at the elusive qualities that have made the Dandy so remarkable. Perhaps the best-known is Beau Brummell, acknowledged as the very first Dandy. However, there are many other Dandies from around the world. And the Dandy has not died out, for there are Dandies thriving today.

Download or read book Yankee Doodle Dandy written by Callista Gingrich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-07 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ellis the Elephant dives back into history! In Yankee Doodle Dandy, the third installment of this New York Times bestselling series, America's favorite time traveling pachyderm is back, teaching kids (and parents!) about the American Revolution. In Sweet Land of Liberty and Land of the Pilgrims' Pride, Ellis the Elephant explored pivotal moments that shaped American history. Now Ellis is back, and eager to learn about America’s most beloved patriots and their courageous fight for independence. Traveling through time, Ellis the Elephant encounters the Sons of Liberty, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, the Founding Fathers, Betsy Ross, and more. Authored by Callista Gingrich and illustrated by Susan Arciero, Yankee Doodle Dandy educates and entertains as Ellis the Elephant experiences the American Revolution. With beautiful illustrations and charming rhymes, Yankee Doodle Dandy is a must read for young and old alike who want to know how America became a free and independent nation.

Download or read book Beau Brummell written by Ian Kelly and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable." -- Beau Brummell Long before tabloids and television, Beau Brummell was the first person famous for being famous, the male socialite of his time, the first metrosexual -- 200 years before the word was conceived. His name has become synonymous with wit, profligacy, fine tailoring, and fashion. A style pundit, Brummell was singly responsible for changing forever the way men dress -- inventing, in effect, the suit. Brummell cut a dramatic swath through British society, from his early years as a favorite of the Prince of Wales and an arbiter of taste in the Age of Elegance, to his precipitous fall into poverty, incarceration, and madness. Brummell created the blueprint for celebrity crash and burn, falling dramatically out of favor and spending his last years in a hellish asylum. For nearly two decades, Brummell ruled over the tastes and pursuits of the well heeled and influential, and for almost as long, lived in penury and exile. With vivid prose, critically acclaimed biographer Ian Kelly unlocks the glittering, turbulent world of late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth-century London -- the first truly modern metropolis: venal, fashion-and-celebrity obsessed, self-centered and self-doubting -- through the life of one of its greatest heroes and most tragic victims. Brummell personified London's West End, where a new style of masculinity and modern men's fashion were first defined. Brummell was the leading Casanova and elusive bachelor of his time, appealing to both men and women of his society. The man Lord Byron once claimed was more important than Napoleon, Brummell was the ultimate cosmopolitan man. "Toyboy" to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and leader of playboys including the eventual king of England, Brummell inspired Pushkin to write Eugene Onegin, and Byron to write Don Juan, and he influenced others from Oscar Wilde to Coco Chanel. Through love letters, historical records, and poems, Kelly reveals the man inside the suit, unlocking the scandalous behavior of London's high society while illuminating Brummell's enigmatic life in the colorful, tumultuous West End. A rare rendering of an era filled with excess, scandal, promiscuity, opulence, and luxury, Beau Brummell is the first comprehensive view of an elegant and ultimately tragic figure whose influence continues to this day.