Description
Book SynopsisThis work considers the visual languages, politics and poetics of personal appearance. "Dandyism" has been most closely associated with the 19th-century style of men such as Oscar Wilde. This book examines the wider influence of dandyism and considers its destablizing aesthetic effect.
Trade ReviewA finely wrought ensemble of studies orienting us to a ‘hyperaesthetics' of sartorial and bodily fashioning. To see such diverse ways that people have bodily troped and conceptually trumped cultural categorizations of gender, race, colonial and socioeconomic positionality is inspiring andwelljust dandy! -- Michael Silverstein,University of Chicago
Both lively and scholarly, this is the collection many have been waiting for. At last the dandy emerges from the western European upper class (and male) closet resplendent in a rainbow of cultural, ethnic, sexual, gender and racial colors. Dandies: Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture is a fascinating investigation into the constructed self, and a major contribution to art and cultural history! -- Whitney Chadwick,author of Women, Art, and Society
Should be of great interest to any civilized personthe dandy, a mutation of taste, is not definable. The book offers a group of excellent essays that attempt to pin it down. -- Alex Katz
