WHERE DID ALL THE DANDIES GO?

Dandies are a rare breed in our times. In these days of personal expression as quick as a tweet, expressive and eccentric men's fashions are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps personal expression is too easily available to us. Perhaps we no longer have the need to distinguish ourselves in our dress. With men especially, our public looks have dwindled to a few stereotypes. On weekends, I could count on one hand the men that aren't in jeans or shorts (viewing from the West Coast). And except in winter, there are fewer still in anything but a t-shirt. My blog post on the film Barry Lyndon and its strong visual depiction of 18th century male peacocks has led me away from the movies, and on to the subject of what has been called dandies.

Christian Esquevin circa 1970

Christian Esquevin circa 1970

A Dandy is defined as "A man who affects extreme elegance in clothes or manners." This definition seems to sneer at the very concept. Perhaps the definition itself defines why dandies should exist - to be someone who does not dress the same as everyone else, or someone who pushes beyond the generally acceptable idea of the appropriate male fashion of the day. And with fashion itself, as Rene Konig pointed out, the leading edge of it is to be conspicuous and to distinguish its wearer from others. Given that male attire has been very conservative for centuries would seem to leave much room for choice. This general lack of adornment in male clothing should be a surprise given the thousands of years of its opposite in history, and given mankind's instinctual inheritance of many traits from the animal kingdom. Male sublimation began with the favored black and austere clothing of the court of King Charles V of Spain. From there the style found favor in the Calvinist and Puritan countries of the north. King Louis XIV of France, one of the first dandies, launched influential fashion trends that countered this bleak style.

King Louis XIV, circa 1670

As the middle class grew in Europe, the modes of dress of the aristocracy served as models. But the very nature of the bourgeois male reigned in the finery, expressiveness, and panache of the aristocrats. Only after the start of the French Revolution did an explosion of male dandyism begin within the middle classes. This period and the Romantic era of 1800-1830 was the heyday for male dandyism.

The "Incroyables" (the Incredibles) was the term given to fops during the French Revolutionary period.

It was during the same period that military uniforms reached the pinnacle of the peacock look. Various regiments had distinctive colors and uniforms - with a variety of feathered or furred hats and helmets. The styling of the military uniform also consciously emphasized or accentuated masculine features through its V-line silhouette; broad shoulders, thin waists,
tight breeches, and added height through tall headgear. And the various belts, sashes, pouches, and sabretaches served nicely as accessories.

Napoleon's Marshal Joachim Murat, a dandy with the panache to lead cavalry charges holding only his baton

It was in England that Beau Brummel (1778-1840) set the style and panache for the tradition of dandyism that followed. He was the first to match the dark color and fabric of his trousers to his jacket - thus creating the suit. 

English gentleman circa 1810.

Count Robert de Montesquiou by Giovanni Boldoni, 1897

The Belle Epoque - lasting from the late 1870s through 1910, roughly the late Victorian and Edwardian period in England - witnessed a spurt of dandy dressing,as well as refinements, aestheticism, and fine living due to the growth of the middle class and the haute bourgeoisie. Haute couture itself developed during this period, and many people were now able to buy pre-made clothing for the first time. Edward Prince of Wales set the styles during the1930s in England and abroad, with his great taste and his willingness to break with aristocratic and upper class dressing conventions. He wore his country suits in the city, wore brown suede shoes with dark blue suits, and started wearing spread collars with ties made with his own knot. In the U.S., Fred Astaire used some of the same flair for his on and off-screen dressing.

Pete Townshend of The Who.

The truly revolutionary thing that happened in fashion was that, starting in the mid 1950s, teenagers and the young started dressing differently than adults. While male movie stars like Marlon Brando and  James Dean influenced male fashion, it was the rock stars that now began setting fashion trends. Starting among urban youth, teens started wearing youth-oriented styles like those of the Rockers, Teddies, and Mods. After the "British Invasion" of rock bands, the styles of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, and The Who held sway in fashionable America.

Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix, two Rock dandies, both dead at age 27.

Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix were the true dandies among the rock stars. Once Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, and Jimi Hendrix started wearing vintage sartorial military jackets and coats, the style spread  in England, where such jackets could still be found in antique and resale shops.  Jimi's style of dress was truly individualistic, like his music. He made popular a psychedelic meets gypsy look that few men could carry off. Brian Jones was another icon.

Brian Jones was a founder of the Rolling Stones as well a a dandy.

After the Mod years and the British Invasion ran their course, men's fashion devolved into music influenced disco, grunge, and hip-hop styles. While flash may have existed, dandyism was lost in this mix. In more modern times a dandy or two could be spotted - Tom Wolfe before, Hamish Boles now. But of all places, the legacy of Dandyism has found root and has thrived in the Congo. Brazzaville and Kinshasa are the home of La SAPE movement, short for the Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes. They call themselves Sapeurs. Rather than being composed of the rich and famous from the countries of The Republic of the Congo or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they are taxi drivers or carpenters - working men all. 

Christian Malala in Bakongo. Photo by Jackie Nickerson.

Brazzaville Sapeurs. Photo from Guy Alain Bombelly.

The Sapeurs like to gather and compare their outfits. Quality matters, as it would for any Dandy. And although it looks like colors run wild, Sapeurs have a simple rule. Don't wear more than three colors - a good rule for anyone to follow.

Sapeur of Bakongo. Photo by Daniele Tamagni.

Maybe another rule should be to bring Dandysm back to style.

EDITH HEAD RETURNS!

Edith Head, amongst a group of very colorful costume designers, was an enigma. She wrote more about herself, appeared frequently on TV as herself, and was interviewed more often than any other costume designer. She has also been the subject of several book-length biographies, and is easily the most recognized name in costume design. Despite it all she remains a bundle of contradictions. If only she could talk to us again and answer our questions. Alas she is in the pantheon, along with most of the late stars and icons she dressed. The closest we will get to understanding her, and it is very close indeed, is through the remarkable work of actor Susan Claassen and her one-woman show, A Conversation with Edith Head. If you're in Los Angeles, or can get there, don't miss the play at the Odyssey Theatre, October 27 through November 13 on Thursdays through Sundays.

The photo above is of Susan Claassen, not Edith Head. Susan's performance takes place on a stage of props carefully collected or created over many years. The brown satin and fur-trimmed gown is a replica of the Edith Head-designed costume for Bette Davis in All About Eve. Another costume may be the beautiful white gown designed for Elizabeth Taylor in  A Place in the Sun. Photos of Miss Head, or Edie as her friends called her, fill the backdrop. A miniature sewing machine is included, of which Miss Head had collected many.

The incredible thing about the play, besides the great acting, is how much more you "get" Edith Head after seeing it. The play script was written by Head biographer Paddy Calistro and Susan Claassen. The play does not just portray the standard view of Edith Head. Head's insecurities and related motivations, her triumphs and disappointments, the false design attributions and all, are revealed under the bright stage lights. Susan portrays these parts of Edith Head, while talking to the audience and reminiscing about her life in the movie business.

And Susan shows some of Edie's caustic side too. If you're a man in the audience , you better not be wearing some shabby shorts or she'll single you out for a lesson on proper dressing. Susan Claassen herself wears a gray suit, Edie's preferred dress for work at the studio. She believed in not outshining the stars she dressed, not a likely possibility anyway given the glamorous stars she usually worked with. But this does reveal that Edie felt she needed to flatter and accommodate the stars, whereas some top designers considered this a contest of wills.

Edith Head at home on her patio. Photo by Michael Childers

Once at home, Edith could be herself. She loved Mexican arts and crafts, and dressed in colorful outfits. She and her husband  Wiard "Bill" Ihnen had a beautiful Spanish style house called Casa Ladera, its patio walls decorated with large paintings of the noted Mexican artist Alfredo Ramos Martinez. She also loved to cook and entertain.

Edith Head typically wore her famous necklace of antique ivory theater tickets. The late Elizabeth Taylor loved the necklace so much that Edie bequeathed it to her at her death. It is a perfect symbol that Susan Claassen had replicated and wears for her shows. You don't want to miss,  A Conversation with Edith Head.

JEAN LOUIS STYLE

The French fashion and costume designer Jean Louis (pronounced Louee) is not as well known as many of his contemporaries from Golden Age Hollywood - but a scroll through his film credits will amaze you. You could start with Rita Hayworth and many of her best known films and fashions, like Gilda, The Lady from Shanghai, Pal Joey, Salome, Tonight and Every Night and Down to Earth, among others. His gown design for Rita Hayworth in the Put the Blame on Mame number is immortal.

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The role of Gilda was meant to be that of an unforgettable and bewitching woman. For the part, Jean Louis' gown creations were perfectly matched to the role as well  as to Rita's screen persona.  The famous black gown is shown above. The strapless evening gown was  perfectly made for Rita's song and dance number. The tied bow at the waist was  designed not only as an effective adornment, but served to cinch Rita's waist soon after she had given birth, while allowing her freedom of vigorous movement for the stage number. The bodice was also designed and structured to hold up while still being flexible for Rita's movements. To accomplish that Jean Louis devised a plastic boning foundation. Another of Jean Louis' costumes for Gilda is shown below.

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Jean Louis became the Head Costume Designer at Columbia Studios in 1944. After leaving France he worked as a designer for Hattie Carnegie in New York before moving to California. Columbia was one of the poorer studios, without the stable of big female stars that the other majors had. They were fortunate to have his services until 1961 when he started his own line while free-lancing film work. He never had the costume budgets that designers like Adrian, Travis Banton, Orry-Kelly, and Irene enjoyed in earlier years. But Columbia was nonetheless prolific in its output, and Jean Louis designed for over 100 films for Columbia. During his career he designed costumes for Kim Novak, Judy Garland, Judy Holliday, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Doris Day, Marilyn Monroe, Loretta Young, and Marlene Dietrich among many other stars.

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Jean Louis' style was always feminine. For period films like Salome, the translucent gowns worn by Rita Hayworth, especially in her Dance of the Seven Veils number needed  to be designed without bras or foundation undergarments. So he designed a body stocking for Rita to wear while giving the allusion of bare flesh beneath the gown. Jean Louis had previously designed classical Greek goddess gowns for Rita in Down to Earth, as shown above.

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Kim Novak was groomed as Rita's replacement at Columbia. In the photo above Jean Louis designed bewitching gowns for her, totally appropriate for her role as a charming witch.

Lana Turner was another of the big stars that Jean Louis dressed and who loved his style. In his costume sketches for Lana in Madame X, shown above and below, he used feminine touches like fur trim and accessories to soften the look of the costumes.

                                                 

Judy Garland requested that Jean Louis design her costumes for A Star is Born in 1954, after being unsatisfied with the first designer she was given. He designed several notable outfits for her. One of the outfits is shown below. Jean Louis was nominated for Best Costume for a Color Film, along with two other designers that were involved in the movie, but he did not win.

He did win a Best Costume Oscar for a black and white film for the 1957 film, Solid Gold Cadillac, starring Judy Holliday.

 

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Jean Louis later designed the wardrobe for Shirley Jones in Bedtime Story in 1964, co-starring Marlon Brando and David Niven.  The movie was later remade as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. One of Shirley's outfits is shown below in the original costume sketch.

Jean Louis also designed costumes for Marilyn Monroe. His designs for her in The Misfits, her final film, were simple, befitting the role and the scenes. He also designed a decidely more glamorous gown for her, the one she wore while singing Happy Birthday Mr. President to John F. Kennedy at his 45th birthday bash in 1962. The gown was made of some 2500 rhinestones sewn onto flesh-colored marquisette.

The Marilyn "Mr President" gown.

Jean Louis must have had fun designing the flapper outfits for Julie Andrews in Thoroughly Modern Millie. Though he hadn't been designing this style during the 1920s the way that Walter Plunkett had done and recreated the look for Singing in the Rain, Jean Louis was nonetheless born in 1907 and personally recalled the style from his youth. The costume sketch above was one of his designs for Julie Andrews.

After costume and fashion designer Irene died, Marlene Dietrich turned to Jean Louis to design her gowns for her live shows. He had the same flair for designing show gowns that combined good taste but with tremendous flair. This was especially the case for his sequined and nude souffle (pronounced like soufel and not like the baked desert) gowns for her live performances in Las Vegas. And when Loretta Young became the first major film star to have her own TV program, she also turned to Jean Louis to design her elegant wardrobe. Years later they married and retired to Palm Springs for the final years of his life.

                                                         

BARRY LYNDON - ANOTHER LOOK

Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon has been judged by many to be either a masterpiece or a monstrous bore. For years after its release in 1975, the common opinion was that of noted film critic Pauline Kael, who called it "an ice-pack of a movie."

I am a big fan of the Baroque era's arts, crafts, and architecture, as well as being a fan of Kubrick's films, and thus have admired the film ever since it first came out.  Admiring this particular Kubrick film is a bit of a guilty pleasure,  bearing no judgment on the quality of the film, but rather on my own guilt in admiring it so for its baroque aesthetics and overwhelming beauty, while downplaying its devastating depiction of human vanity, aggressiveness, and greed.

 

 

The first scene could be a metaphor for the whole movie: a beautifully composed view of the bucolic countryside, in the distance two men fight a duel, and one of them will die. It will be the protagonist Redmond Barry's father as it happens, and so begins the story based on the picaresque novel by William Thackeray.

In my opinion, Barry Lyndon has few equals in harnessing the arts to the service of film making.  Kubrick poured over and drew inspiration from the oil paintings and watercolors depicting 18th century European pastoral and courtly life, especially those of Thomas Gainsborough, William Hogarth, and Francois Boucher. Many of his scenes are purposefully composed as would a period landscape painting. Kubrick also listened to all of the European 18th century classical music he could find, and the soundtrack is so perfectly blended with the film that it is hard to listen separately to one of the pieces without envisioning the unfolding scene, perfectly in sync with its soundtrack. In this sense, Barry Lyndon is primarily a visual and auditory experience. It's dialogue is brief, and we depend on the excellent voice- over narration given by Michael Hordern, spoken as Thackeray had written it or in similar style.

 

 

Redmond Barry is played by Ryan O'Neal, whose plain good looks made a good stand-in for the plucky character inadvertently set off on a life of adventure. As narrated, his attractive cousin Nora Brady was "the cause of all his early troubles." After seducing him to a soundtrack of the Chieftain's "Women of Ireland," she promptly takes up with an English officer of means. The duel that ensues between the jealous rivals (one of many duels in the film), forces him to take to the road with a pouch of money his mother gave him. Though he was mightily impressed with the cut of a soldier's scarlet uniform, it was only a highway robbery that left him penniless and forced to enlist in the army. After many adventures and mis-adventures in various armies in various countries he vowed that, "never again would he fall from the ranks of a gentleman." But this was not before his experience among the dregs of the Prussian army had ensured that he was "far advanced in the science of every kind of misconduct."

 

 

The life of a gentleman rake was close enough for our intrepid hero. He had fallen in with a fellow Irish libertine who called himself the Chevalier di BaliBari, and thus did he meet the Lady Honoria Lyndon, "a woman of vast wealth and great beauty," played by Marisa Berenson. His slow seduction of her at the gambling table and on the palace terrace is a masterpiece of film-making. No greater contrast exists to the current methods of filming scenes of seduction. The scene on the terrace is wordless, and indeed, nearly motionless. It develops through the beautiful, inexorable beat of Schubert's Piano Trio No. 2. The gestures of the actors are slow, with each slight movement invested with meaning. When Lady Lyndon stands outside on the terrace, only a slight sideways glance conveys the understanding that she awaits him. After he advances to her, their hands show their anticipation, reaching out slowly and deliberately before they kiss.

      

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The role of the Countess Lyndon is played stylishly but with dignified restraint by Marisa Berenson. Her beauty is magnified by impressive period-styled wigs. The costumes throughout are authentically and beautifully designed and add to the richness of the scenes and the characterization of the actors. The fabrics and laces used blend perfectly with the rich tapestries, linens, and upholsteries in the film. The make-up too provides the white-powdered, beauty-spotted, 18th century style adopted by both men and women. And these personal adornments and the great palace interiors, are richly bathed in light - the strafing of natural light through open windows during the day and the incredible glow provided by candle-light and chandeliers at night. For the candle-lit scenes, no artificial lighting was used, and such was Kubrick's obsessive compulsion in replicating the look of the era that when no camera lens was found capable of filming such scenes, he used a lens built by the Carl Zeiss company for NASA: the Zeiss 50mm lens with the largest aperture of any ever built for a movie (f/0.7). Thus are we provided with that candle-lit chiaroscuro so beautifully used by painters such as Caravaggio and de La Tour.

 

 

The fortunes of Redmond Barry are looking up as he courts Lady Lyndon, the wife of a moribund Lord. Their quick marriage after the Lord's death soon turns Barry into the lord of the manor, especially in his own mind and demeanor. He is now known by the name of Barry Lyndon.

    

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Before long a son is born to them, which Barry loves above all else and dotes on. Such behaviour is in contrast to the treatment he gives Lady Lyndon's first son by her late husband, and the pair develop a mutual animosity.

 

Aside from doting on his son, Barry Lyndon reverts to his womanizing. His attempts to aggrandise his name and to secure a title of his own leads him deeper and deeper into debt. Barry's luck has changed again, and his bad behaviour compounds his difficulties.

 

 

The artfully composed picture above of Barry and his son foretells the isolation that Barry will soon indure. The inexorable beat of Handel or Schubert still plays, in ever more mournful tempo, as one disaster after another befalls Barry Lyndon. Even the panoramic landscapes are now shown devoid of  people that formerly had decorated their scenes.

A climactic duel between Barry and his step-son was fastidiously filmed, shot in such slow and deliberate actions that it paralleled the earlier seduction scene, this time to the music of Handel's Sarabande, the movie's theme music and itself of measured tempo. The scene is filmed in a barn, not in the pastoral settings used earlier.  It is here that Barry Lyndon finally displays true gentlemanly behaviour, but alas it is all for nought.

 

Stanley Kubrick has set the last scene with Lady Lyndon, her son and their attendants,signing documents that will place their world back in order. The date that she signs the documents is 1789. This perfectly composed tableau shows the English aristocracy in their element. Kubrick has again presented a beautiful scene which belies reality and the events taking place across the English channel, where the French Revolution has begun. Soon such palaces as these will be looted there, and many of their aristocrat inhabitants will be sent to the guillotine.

Kubrick's film-making techniques were unified throughout Barry Lyndon. His use of deep-focus was prevalent, which was used along with zoom-in and zoom-out shots that either clarified an action or gave a very different perspective on the events. His devotion to the authentic bordered on an obsession.The gathered packets of paper documents on a desk for example were held together with nearly imperceptible straight-pins, as they would have been before staples or clips came along. Over eight minutes of screen time and weeks of filming and editing were devoted to the climactic duel scene, in which moments pass ponderously as men face off with pistols, their seconds standing by and following every protocol.

Costume design for the film was recognized by an Academy Award given to Milena Canonero and Ulla-Brit Soderlund. This was the second film designed by the distinguished costume designer Canonero, whose first had been for Kubrick's Clockwork Orange. Barry Lyndon also won awards for Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Music. Stanley Kubrick, although nominated, has never won an Academy Award for Best Director.