All things Fine and DANDY

Trends are often creatures of cycle. . . With an occasional twist of irony along the way. In the 1800s, the Regency Dandy was in the ascendant. Led by Beau Brummell - a relentless snob whose capricious eyebrow could banish the best dressed from Haut Ton events. Simply for lacking 'the look'. When his regiment was relocated to Manchester, Brummell resigned: "Now you must be aware how disagreeable this would be to me. I could really not go: think, Your Royal Highness, Manchester! " (or so the story goes: Brummell's anyway. His military career was shabby and his motives a matter of speculation)* In recent decades, the revitalised city has hosted the Commonwealth Games and a thriving international arts festival. Now Manchester captures Dandy Style . Where "concepts such as elegance, uniformity and spectacle will be explored from the 18th Century to the present day." The exhibition draws upon Manchester Art Gallery 's own collection of men's clothin...

  Take a deep breath, dear reader. This rant simmered under four monarchs prior to print in 1866 : "How unspeakably odious - with a few brilliant exceptions, such as Alvanley and others - were the  dandies of forty years ago. They were a motley crew, with nothing remarkable about them but their insolence. They were generally not high-born, nor rich, nor very good-looking, nor clever, nor agreeable; and why they arrogated to themselves the right of setting up their own fancied superiority on a self-raised pedestal, and despising their betters, Heaven only knows. They were generally middle-aged, some even elderly men, had large appetites and weak digestions, gambled freely - and had no luck. They hated everybody, and abused everybody, and would sit together in White's bay window, or the  pit  boxes at the Opera, weaving tremendous crammers. (1) They swore a good deal, never laughed, had their own particular slang, looked hazy after dinner, and had most of them been pat...