I asked 11 stylish people what they learned about dressing from their fathers for this fathers day:
The Dandy Life Continues
The big news from the world of I am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman is that Rose and I (and Rose's husband Kelly,) will be making a documentary this fall! We're very excited to revisit our dandy subjects and to have an opportunity to add some new voices to our menagerie of elegant fellows.
In the meanwhile, I am Dandy received a big bump when it was featured in a segment on CBS Sunday Morning:
I was also the subject of a mini-documentary called "Am I Dandy?"
And last but certainly not least, it is my great honor to have been profiled in 12 outfits (with one more to come,) for the artist Ike Ude's Chic Index:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
In the meanwhile, I am Dandy received a big bump when it was featured in a segment on CBS Sunday Morning:
I was also the subject of a mini-documentary called "Am I Dandy?"
And last but certainly not least, it is my great honor to have been profiled in 12 outfits (with one more to come,) for the artist Ike Ude's Chic Index:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
"I am Dandy" in the New Year
I haven't posted in a while, which isn't to say I haven't been busy. Quite the opposite - with the book in its second printing already and talks for a follow-up as well as a video project, Rose and I have been working hard on our next steps as well as continuing our promotion of the book. Above is the book trailer Rose made featuring me reading from the book's introduction. The trailer was also mentioned on United Style.
Most importantly, there are a few upcoming book events:
On Saturday, February 22nd, Rose and I will be part of a presentation and book signing at Disneyworld as part of their "Dapper Day" celebrations.
On Wednesday, March 5, Rose and I are participating, along with Simon Doonan and Dr. Andre Churchwell, in a panel discussion at the Fashion Institute of Technology museum. G. Bruce Boyer will be moderating.
Here are a few highlights from the past couple of months.
I was very honored to be named "Dandy of the Year 2013" by Dandyism.net. The Tweedland blog picked up on the story here.
I was also very proud to be featured for a second time on The Style Blogger, wearing outfits inspired by the men in the book.
Rose has a wonderful post full of photos of our event at The National Arts Club.
Prowlster wrote a glowing review of the book.
3:AM Magazine has a very thoughtful in-depth article about dandyism in general and the book.
CNN.com asked me and Rose to put together a slideshow with commentary about the book.
Esquire Latin America featured an interview with me and Rose in their most recent issue, and put a small slideshow online.
CBP magazine reviewed the book.
Design Boom did a feature on the book.
As did Buro24/7
The Fedora Lounge has a long thread devoted to the book.
The book is mentioned on The Journal of Style
VintageVille Magazine did a feature on the book.
StyleSight wrote about the exhibit of Rose's photographs at the National Arts Club.
Julija Hunt posted about the London launch party on her blog.
Foreign coverage:
Zeit Online had a slideshow of images from the book.
Germany's Dandy Club reviewed the book.
I-Ref featured the book.
MDR Figaro covered the book along with the German edition of Lord Whimsy's book.
FahrradJournal covered the book.
GLAM magazine did an article about the book.
More Press for "I am Dandy"
Last Sunday, October 20th, we had our second New York book event at Against Nature, the shop which I manage. As always, Rose has an excellent summary with beautiful photos over at The Dandy Portraits.
The big event of the night was when legendary New York Times street style photographer Bill Cunningham showed up and took some photos of the party. Rose and I were thrilled yesterday to find ourselves on the Evening Hours page of the Sunday Times.
An excerpt from the book - the profile of Dr. Andre Churchwell, pictured above, third from left - is featured in this month's issue of The Chap, along with a profile of yours truly! You can't read it online so you'd better go order a copy.
Esquire's blog did a very nice write-up of the book.
And GQ's blog featured a few of my favorite looks from the book.
Our friend at the Fine Young Gentleman wrote about the Bergdorf Party.
And Buffalo Dandy wrote a nice review of the book.
I'm sure there will be more press coming, especially because Rose and I both have a few events coming up:
On Tuesday, November 5th I'll be reading from the book at the Freerange Nonfiction Reading Series at Culturefix on the Lower East Side.
The following night, Wednesday, November 6th, I'll be judging Literary Death Match at Cake Shop.
And the following night, Thursday, November 7th, Rose and I will be signing books and celebrating with our friends (and newlyweds!) Matt and Enrique at The Fine and Dandy Shop. RSVP now!
And on November 18th, an exhibition of Rose's photographs will open at the National Arts Club, with a party to celebrate.
We hope to see you all in the coming weeks. Stay dandy!
"I am Dandy" Continues to Draw Admiring Attention
Photo by Jane Kratochvil
Last Thursday night Rose and I celebrated the release of "I am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman," at a very elegant and beautiful party at Bergdorf Goodman's men's store, co-sponsored by the New Yorker and Brioni. The party was incredible and overwhelming; over 500 people RSVP'd, many of the dandies from the book among them. Needless to say, it was a picture-perfect crowd, and I'm sure Rose will post more photographs from the night over at The Dandy Portraits.
Coverage of the book and its related events has been phenomenal.
The Bergdorf Goodman blog has a summary with some lovely photographs.
The Wall Street Journal wrote about the Bergdorf event today.
Women's Wear Daily also covered the event.
The always-erudite Lord Whimsy wrote about the evening on his blog.
Rose and I took over the Bergdorf Goodman blog last week, posting this article on "Dressing Dandy," among other things.
Cator Sparks, one of the men in the book, interviewed us for the Huffington Post.
Gilt MANual interviewed Rose about the book for their blog.
The Scout also has an excellent interview with Rose.
A Suitable Wardrobe reviewed the book here.
Overseas coverage has been great, too:
In the UK the book was featured in The Times on Sunday Magazine as well as The Daily Mail and The Independent.
Belgian magazine Het Nieuwsblad has an article on the book (in Dutch.)
German magazine Manager also has a feature on the book (in German.)
But perhaps most impressive of all is the video feature Gestalten.tv did on the book:
They are Dandies: The Return of the Elegant Gentlemen from Gestalten on Vimeo.
"I am Dandy" Has Arrived!
It’s true: I’ve let this blog lie fallow for too long. But I have a good excuse: “I am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman,” the book I co-authored with photographer Rose Callahan has been published by Gestalten Press and the promotional cotillion has begun! Rose has, admittedly, kept her own blog more up to date than I have, but then again she always does.
First thing’s first: Gestalten’s page for the book is here.
And it can, of course, also be ordered on Amazon.com
and Amazon.co.uk.
So go buy a copy and put it on your coffee table. Or buy several copies and use
them as a coffee table.
The book has only been on shelves for a couple of weeks, but
the reviews we’ve seen so far have all been extremely positive. Admittedly,
some of them were written by men who are in the book themselves, but to be
honest, they were the critics whose opinions we cared about the most.
Hugo Jacomet at The Parisian Gentleman wrote an extensive
and very flattering review
of the book.
James Sherwood made me blush with his
praise.
Sven Raphael Schneider reviewed the book for Gentleman’s
Gazette, which is syndicated on the Details
Magazine blog.
I’m particularly proud that the brilliant scholar of
Dandyism Melanie Grundmann wrote a highly
favorable review of the book on her blog.
And Dandyism.net’s Nick Willard had excellent
things to say about the book itself before ably fulfilling his duty as a
correspondent for that website and intelligently but uncompromisingly reviewing
the men in the book for admission into the dandy canon.
Freshness Magazine did a review here.
DROME magazine wrote about it here.
SocialLife Chicago recommends the book here.
Sydney, Australia’s Le Noued Papillion calls it a “must-have
book.”
Only Cool Stuff wrote about it here.
And this post on
I am a Dandy Cat proves that the internet is a strange place.
Last week our first book events took place in London. Our
big launch party took place on September 17th at Gieves &
Hawkes, No. 1 Savile Row. There was a good turnout, all well turned-out, and
the Champagne flowed like, well, Champagne. A commenter on some website
criticized the event for being too “self-congratulatory.” Aside from the fact
that this person clearly has a poor concept of the entire point of a book
launch, I think Rose and I have every reason to congratulate each other and our
selves. We’ve worked very hard and we’re excited to see how the fruits of our
labor will ripen.
Rose’s post on the event is here.
Gieves and Hawkes posted about it on their blog here.
Dickon Edwards, one of the men in the book, wrote about the
event on
his blog.
Barima Owusu-Nyantekyi, another of the book’s subjects,
wrote about it on his site Mode
Parade
Winston Chesterfield, yet another man from the book, wrote
about it for Men’s
Flair.
Code of the Gentleman covered the event here.
The Vintage Vault at StyleSight covered it here.
The Grey Fox wrote about it here.
The Rake put up a small
post.
And, of course, Dandyism.net couldn’t pass up the
opportunity for one of their infamous rounds of “Who’s
the Dandy?”
Our second London event was a small affair at the beautiful
shop of our friend Stephen Hitchcock, tailor extraordinaire.
Rose posted about it here.
As did the
Rake.
Rose is currently in Paris for another book event at
Cifonelli Tailors, which I unfortunately couldn’t attend due to work, but I’m
sure she’ll have many excellent things to post on her own site about it.
In the coming weeks there will be more coverage in
mainstream and print media, international television, online videos, and guest
blog posts in various places by me and Rose. We’re preparing for our big New
York launch party and subsequent events, and I’ll try my best to update this
blog more regularly. But no promises – I’m pretty busy being
self-congratulatory these days.
Dandy Talk at the National Arts Club
On Friday, October 5th, I will be participating in a panel discussion on Dandysim at the National Arts Club. With me on the panel will be Rose Callahan of The Dandy Portraits, Matt Fox of the Fine and Dandy Shop, and manners expert Thomas P. Farley. There will be a reception with refreshments provided by Hendricks Gin and music provided by Dandy Wellington and his band. I hope you can come!
The Chap: Seersucker Social
The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote for The Chap magazine about Washington D.C.'s Dandies and Quaintrelles 2011 Seersucker Social. The beautiful photographs are provided by Rose Callahan of The Dandy Portraits:
...For the Capitol city of a superpower nation, Washington DC is sadly insular, non-cosmopolitan, and aesthetically conservative. The suits are gray or navy, the ties are red or blue, and not since the pith-helmeted and moustachioed Teddy Roosevelt has a president looked like anything other than a businessman. The summer heat can be stifling, adding to the soporific atmosphere of the city.It was with the admirable aim of introducing his notoriously staid home city to a form of more “refined leisure” that Eric Brewer founded Dandies & Quaintrelles. The group is dedicated to organizing events which embody an egalitarian elegance worthy of the Bill of Rights......Seersucker is by no means a new addition to the pantheon of summer fabrics. The word arrived in the English Language from the Hindi sirsakar, which in turn got it from the Persian shiroshakar, by way of Tamerlane's 14th-century invasion. The original means “milk and sugar,” a reference to the alternating textures of the puckered stripes of cotton. The fabric is most commonly found in white with another color in eighth-inch vertical Bengal stripes. It is less frequently found in gingham checks, and I once nearly fainted in admiring awe at a white-on-white striped seersucker dinner jacket with a built-up linen shawl collar and turn-back cuffs. Because the fabric is so light and crisp (holding a crease much better than plain linen,) it's perfect for summer suits, usually half-lined......At the very start of the twentieth century, seersucker began its journey to become one of this country's best-loved fabrics. Although the British wore seersucker in the empire's equatorial colonies, its popularity boomed in the heat of the American South. It soon became a staple of the Southern Gentleman's wardrobe, and the traditional uniform for going to the Kentucky Derby, getting tanked on Mint Juleps, and losing your son's college fund on a long-shot. The fabric later gained in popularity when those sly young Ivy-Leaguers appropriated the garments as separate pieces rather than full suits.Even the hallowed halls of the Senate occasionally see seersucker. Once a year, both lady and gentleman Senators celebrate Seersucker Thursday, a tradition started by Republican Senator Trent Lott. The event harks back to a time before air-conditioning, when the heat was so punishing that sweat-covered legislators, probably driven mad, did things like enact prohibition....
Rose Callahan's "The Dandy Portraits"
While researching my history book, I was fortunate enough to meet some fascinating present-day dandies of wide variety, each of whom pointed me towards yet more dandies, often in unlikely places. It turns out that at the same time, a photographer named Rose Callahan was meeting these very same people. Strangely enough, none of them mentioned either of us to the other. But Rose and I eventually did cross paths and since then we've worked together on articles for The Chap magazine and the book which will eventually come out of her project.
The Dandy Portraits is a website not to be missed - Rose's photographs are stunning and her subjects are fascinating both visually and personally. I'll be posting her photos often when discussing my meetings with any of these men. Be sure to check it out!
The Dandy Portraits is a website not to be missed - Rose's photographs are stunning and her subjects are fascinating both visually and personally. I'll be posting her photos often when discussing my meetings with any of these men. Be sure to check it out!
About "Lives of the Dandies"
For the past several years, I have been researching and writing a book about the lives of dandies of the past 200+ years, some famous, some obscure, all fascinating. The "Lives of the Dandies" blog is an opportunity to share snippets of my work, my research, and various dandy-related topics.
As an undergraduate at NYU, I wrote my senior thesis on Dandyism in the 20th Century, unknowingly setting out on what would later become for me a scholarly obsession. My undergraduate thesis, looking back on it, was just as half-cocked and unremarkable as one might expect. Around that time, I also wrote two articles for Dandyism.net: one on Beau Brummell's biographer Ian Kelly playing Brummell in an off-broadway play, and one on a dandyism discussion panel in New York City. That was the extent of my dandy-related output for some years.
However, while attending the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, I revisited my dandy obsession, completing a book-proposal and a substantial amount of content for the book. My proposal won the prestigious Lytton Fellowship, which awarded me a sizable grant to continue work on the book. Since then, I have been traveled the world writing and doing research - spending time on Savile Row speaking with world-famous tailors and cutters and looking through archives dating back to the Regency period, conducting interviews both in person and online with the likes of Stephen Fry, Gay Talese, Ian Kelly, and many others, reading hundreds of books, archived newspapers and magazines, meeting some of the most eccentric and extraordinary living dandies, and traveling as far as the Congo to spend a week with the famous Sapeurs.
Since my descent into the world of the dandy, which seems to stretch on through an ever-widening series of caves, canals, and boulevards with no end in sight, I have also become a regular writer for The Chap magazine on dandy-related subjects, the manager of the appropriately-named Against Nature bespoke atelier in New York, and a collaborator with Rose Callahan of The Dandy Portraits - a photo project which will ultimately become its own book.
This blog is my opportunity to share a few of the bits and pieces I've either collected or generated on my journey. I hope you enjoy it.