(new) dandyism

[Faust]

Re: (new) dandyism

Those look like hipsters, not Dandies.

[Avantster]

Re: (new) dandyism



They are hipsters - she deliberately included pictures of them as
she is discussing if there is anything dandyish about hipsters. Using
Barthes, she argues that while dandies were unique in their
singularity, once "limited to the freedom to buy (but not to create), dandyism could not but suffocate and die". Therefore she proposes "the
idea of the hipster as a person disaffected with the death of dandyism,
and attempting to reassert its lost singularity and the baroque ways
that are enabled by contemporary consumer culture".

I would argue that hipsters are not contemporary dandies. They
do not subject their clothing with such logic nor can they be identified as being singular. Quite the
opposite - they identify with each others similarities, and the pictures only provide evidence of this. To my mind they
are a subculture.

What I found more interesting though was the question of whether the emergence of ready-to-wear clothing destroyed dandyism. What do you think?

But in practice, writes Barthes, the "detail" was not absolutely singular, and the rise of ready-to-wear clothing struck dandyism a fatal blow.

But,
more subtly, what ruined dandyism for good, was the birth of "original"
boutiques; these boutiques sold clothes and accessories that were not
part of mass culture; but because this exclusivity was part of
commerce, albeit within the luxury sector, it become itself normative:
by buying a shirt, a tie or cufflinks at X or at Z, one was conforming
to a certain style, and abdicating all personal (one might say
narcissistic) invention of singularity.

I am interested in Barthes's
insistence that "once limited to the freedom to buy (but not to
create), dandyism could not but suffocate and die". He's suggesting
that the creativity in consumption is not sufficient to sustain the
extreme singularity required by dandyism.

[Faust]

Re: (new) dandyism



I don't think Barthes is right. Or, rather, not fully right. It may be true that a Dandy's choice of original clothes has diminished with the rise of retail and the fall of bespoke, but it does not mean that a Dandy attitude has died with it. Dandy attitude cannot die, because, while being carefully calculated, it originates in the heart. Whether it's disdain for mass culture or co-optation of mass culture, the Dandy will always be outside of it. The spirit of the Dandy is the spirit of everything that's individualistic. Therefore, hipsters cannot be dandies - they are just another type of a heard. I don't think the Dandy spirit can die (although it can be greatly diminished by capitalism). Susan Sontag says that there will always be an aristocratic class in relation to culture. By aristocratic she simply means 'outside of ' the mass culture (not necessarily 'above' the way the Avant-Garde was). If there isn't one, there is no criticism of culture. I hope you catch my drift...

On a side note, I proposed a Master's level course on Dandyism at a university here. I really hope it gets accepted. Then I can start doing my research, and really fire this thread up.

[DHC]

again..bumping some old for noobs

[Faust]

Thanks, David. Good times :-)