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Charles Baudelaire

Thus I am led to regard adornment as one of the signs of the primitive nobility of the human soul.

                              Photo: Felix Nadar, Baudelaire

Review, analyse everything that is natural, all the actions and desires of absolutely natural man:  you will find nothing that is not horrible.  Everything that is beautiful, and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

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Contrary to what a lot of thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance.  For the perfect dandy, delight in these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of mind...What then can this passion be, which has crystalized into a doctrine, and has formed a number of outstanding devotees, this unwritten code that has moulded so proud a brotherhood?  It is, above all, the burning desire to create a personal form of originality, within the external limits of social conventions.  

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"Fashion must therefore be thought of as a symptom of the taste for the ideal that floats on the surface in the human brain, above all the coarse, earthy and disgusting things that life according to nature accumulates, as a sublime distortion of nature, or rather as a permanent and constantly renewed effort to reform nature." Charles Baudelaire,”The Painter of Modern Life,” Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists.

All citations are taken from "The Painter of Modern Life." Beauty, as Baudelaire puts it so well, is composed, not always natural. His comments complement Nevelson's statements perfectly: Baudelaire is more philosphical, Nevelson more direct and personal.  Both emphasize the thought and depth which accompany the construction of a beautiful sartorial surface.

Vladimir Nabokov

The Art of the Detail 

 ..., of the little thing which a man observes and greets with a friendly nod of the spirit while the crowd around him is being driven by some common impulse to some common goal. Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature.

This post has more to do with a key idea to self-styling than the personal style of its author.  In this wonderful passage Nabokov identifies one of the most important elements to great writing--the art of the detail.  Although Nabokov is talking about literature, the idea can be applied to other creative activities, including self-styling.  We think of the way Charles Eames wore his belt at the side, Andy Warhol's wigs, Dali's mustache, or Nureyev's hats. These details often become signature pieces of our subjects. It's what sets the "uncommon" from the "common," what separates the dress of creative minds from that of the rest of the world.