Frances Wilson
The First Metrosexual
Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Dandy
By Ian Kelly
Hodder & Stoughton 578pp £20
Beau Brummell was famous in his time for washing at least once a day and tying a perfect neckcloth. So great was his skill in both areas that he achieved what was otherwise unknown for a boy from a middle-class home: he became an honorary member of the Regency aristocracy. In a comic reversal of roles, the Beau’s elaborate levees were attended by the Regent, and the Regent was made fashionable by his friendship with the Beau. (‘I made him what he is, and I can unmake him,’ Brummell later said of his royal friend.) He was truly the son of the French Revolution, as Ian Kelly argues in this grand new account of the rapid rise and fall of the ultimate Regency dandy. If Brummell could masquerade as socially superior, anyone could; he was ‘a man whose style made it possible for Everyman to act like a prince’; his dandyism ‘marked the death of kings, and the dawn of modern concepts of self’. What’s more, for all his snobbism, Brummell showed how the common man could dress well. The starched neckcloth ‘was the beginnings of his anti-style style: a simple perfection of line that took attention and know-how … but did not, per se, require wealth.’
Brummell’s anti-style mirrored the age. Understated, restrained, rational and utterly unfoppish, he was anything but the flamboyant ‘dandy’ we associate with the term, a role which was anyway filled by the prince, dolled up to the nines as he was in pink ribbons and bows. Brummell advocated the wearing of
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk