I’ve just discovered the difference between a fop and a dandy. Not that I’d been hugely struggling to find out up until now but Ian Kelly makes the distinction in his new book Beau Brummel: the Ultimate Dandy. For fop think complexity, elaboration, showiness and, what might now be called, bling. In an interesting Daily Telegraph review James Chambers makes the point that before Brummel men favoured silk, and routinely wore make-up and wigs. After Brummel:”…their clothes were simple and well cut and in the evenings they dressed in black and white as they still do today.” In Brummel’s day the words fop and dandy were opposites not synonyms.
It explains why ‘fine and dandy’ became a popular expression - until quite recently in the US - where ‘fine and foppish’ never did despite the pleasing alliteration.

It was in [France ]( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/10/06/bodau06.xml)that Brummel found perhaps his true home generating unabashed learned treatises on ‘le dandysme.’
The Brits, on the other hand, are accused here of not taking Brummel seriously enough, perceiving him merely as a man of fashion. But his emphasis on cut and cloth and his instinct for what we would now regard as ‘quiet good taste’ survive pretty much intact as a certain kind of male benchmark. I’m reminded of the the English designer Hardy Amies who once said: “You should choose your clothes with style, put them on with care and then forget them.”
That is surely pure [Brumme](http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~awoodley/regency/dandy.html)l.

Labels: It's either the left brain or the right

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