This year, late last month, April, I found myself crowned, by The New York Times’
@nytstyle as “America’s Premier Living Dandy” but a dandy who “doesn’t want the title.” It was as stunning and as humbling an experience. I had to let the whole thing cool off for a while before fully reckoning and/or acknowledging it.
Crowned as the Premier Living American dandy is fabulous, I, however, value praise or damnation with equanimity.
Text wise, Professor Rhonda Garelick
@rhondagarelick did a terrific job of it, writing in a rather accessible manner, unlike in the semiotic language academics usually indulge in and that requires doses of Aspirin or Advil to process even a single sentence and good luck tackling a paragraph or trudging through whole page, my fondness for semiotics notwithstanding. (And Alas, these conspicuously opaque academic texts, illuminate nothing extraordinary). Amongst Prof. Garelick’s books that I highly recommend, are, “Rising Star: Dandyism, Gender, and Performance in the Fin de Siècle” and “Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History”. A cute, little anecdote: none other than
@amyfinecollinsibdl , during one of our conversations, once described Prof. Rhonda as having a huge brain. Yes, she does and we approve! The last slide of this post has a summary of Prof. Garelick’s bio.
(Just as well, Rhonda lovingly evoked, in her article, my portrait of the great thespian, Colman Domingo
@kingofbingo , for the May,
@voguemagazine cover, The Met Issue).
I would be remiss if I didn’t especially thank Christy Harmon,
@christyyyyk Photo Editor at The New York Times, for her fine eye in curating the accompanying photos/images that ran with Rhonda’s text. Ms. Harmon also astutely picked the amiably wonderful, young photographer, Andre D. Wagner to photograph me, at my Chelsea studio.
re: excerpt
“Style is always as timeless as tomorrow, because style is triumphantly unfashionable beyond the purview of fashion”. Excerpted from the commissioned epilogue essay that I wrote for “Superfine”
@metcostumeinstitute , the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
#dandy #dandyism #TheMet #MetGala #Vogue #lordbyron #oscarwilde #beaubrummell
