I asked 11 stylish people what they learned about dressing from their fathers for this fathers day:
Dandy Talk Success
Last friday I took part in a panel discussion on Dandysim at the National Arts Club. The panel was moderated by Emmy Award-winning designer David Zyla, and featured Rose Callahan of The Dandy Portraits, Matt Fox of the Fine and Dandy Shop, and manners expert Thomas P. Farley.
Rose has posted several photos on the Dandy Portraits blog.
The event was the most popular installment so far of the friday fashion discussions which Mr. Zyla has been organizing - the Club was overbooked with RSVPs and a waiting list nearly as long as the guest list itself. The audience, as can be seen in the event photos posted on The Dandy Portraits blog, was incredibly stylish.
Before the talk, Rose screened her excellent video about necktie designer extraordinaire Sean Crowley.
The talk itself was only forty minutes long, and there were four panelists, so we each only got to speak a little bit, but the discussion was lively, and the questions from the audience were particularly good - questions about race, class, gender, and the relative importance of vintage/retro/nostalgia. After I shut down a question about the possibility of female dandies with the reply "no," my mother raised her hand to ask us to elaborate because she didn't want to let me off the hook that easily.
The Fine Young Gentleman blog posted about the event here, and even put up an audio recording of the talk. (My favorite part of his writeup is obviously: 'The most memorable quote from the night came from Mr. Adams when he noted that “I think that probably the only people who wore bowties for years was the Nation Of Islam, they might have accidentally kept Brooks Brothers in business.”')
After the talk, we were treated to fantastic jazz by Dandy Wellington and his band.