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.

***

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.  

***

"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.

George Gordon, Lord Byron

If you had seen Lord Byron, you could scarcely disbelieve him—so beautiful a countenance I scarcely ever saw—his teeth so many stationary smiles—his eyes the open portals of the sun – things of light, and for light – and his forehead so ample, and yet so flexible, passing from marble smoothness into a hundred wreathes and lines and dimples correspondent to the feelings and sentiments he is uttering. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk.

                                                                                                                      

I have some very "magnifique" Albanian dresses, the only expensive articles in this country. They cost 50 guineas each and have so much gold they would cost in England two hundred. Byron, Letter to his Mother, 12 November 1809. 

Of all his fancy dress uniforms, Byron took special delight in this costume;  thus turbaned and brocaded, he sat for his famous portrait by the painter Thomas Phillips...In his fantasy, Byron now became what he beheld:  an Oriental potentate, powerful and free, to whom nothing was forbidden.”  Benita Eisler, Byron.

                                                                    

Coleridge's paean is nothing short of a rhapsody.  Bryon's beauty was legendary: women apparently fainted upon seeing him. Top portrait is by Richard Westall; Thomas Phillips portrait of 1835 is entitled Lord Byron in Albanian Dress.  

Jean Cocteau

Beauty cannot be recognized by a cursory glance. 

                                               Photo: Irving Penn, Jean Cocteau

Each thread of Cocteau’s tie, vest, and suit is etched in light and shadow; the patterns and the texture pop out in vivid, tactile detail.  The drape of his coat over an extended arm adds drama and balance to the composition. Cocteau is dressed in the sartorial attire of a dandy, which, by all accounts, he was.  There is an air of flamboyance about him, until you look at his face.  His dead-serious expression registers the fierce intelligence of a keen observer, as if he is taking our measure while deigning to allow us to take his. Philip Gefter, "Irving Penn, RIP." 

Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value.

Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images. 

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

 

Cocteau's statements are far more elliptical than those made by Dalí or Oscar Wilde. Cocteau espouses a much more introspective notion of dress and beauty. His quotes stress the ephemerality of fashion and beauty's relation to notions of ugliness.

Cocteau embodies the idea of "intellectual beauty" in the Penn portrait. I love the play of pattern in his attire--glen plaid suit, houndstooth sweater, and striped tie.  His face radiates a fierce intelligence. The angularity of his body adds to the beautiful line created by staged pose. His hands are carefully posed in all the photos, adding drama in some, composure in another.

Miles Davis

          Before his performance, Mr. Davis will wear a single-breasted (one button) beige pongee suit, combining the French and Italian influence on pants and jacket.  When Mr. Davis is playing on stage, he will be wearing a double-breasted gray imported silk (two buttons) featuring only two pockets to create an extra slim line.

         

          After his performance, Miles will relax in a pink, single-breasted seersucker jacket with matching pants, hand-made loafers of doeskin, and white sports shirt worn with a pink silk square.  Press release for Randall Island Jazz Festival, 1961.

 I was changing my attitude about a lot of things, like the look of my wardrobe.  I was working all these clubs where there was a lot of smoke, and it would get in the fabric of my suits.  Plus, everyone was starting to dress a little looser at concerts, at least the rock musicians were, and that might have affected me.  Everybody was into blackness, you know, the black consciousness movement, and so a lot of African and Indian fabrics were being worn.  I started wearing African dashikis and robes and looser clothing plus a lot of Indian tops by a guy named Hernando, who was from Argentina and who had a place in Greenwich Village.  That’s where Jimi Hendrix bought most of his clothes.  So I started buying wraparound Indian shirts from him, patch suede pants from a black designer named Steven Burrows, and shoes from a place in London called Chelsea Cobblers...I had moved away from the cool Brooks Brothers look and into this other thing, which for me was more what was happening with the times.  I found I could move around on the stage much better.  I wanted to move on stage, play in different places, because there are areas on stage where the music and sound are much better than other places.  I was starting to explore for those places.  Miles Davis. Autobiography of Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe.

 ...behind a mask that seemed incapable of expressing anything, one sensed sensitivity and strength as well as a deeper level of expressivity.  Small gestures, no matter how studied, expressed their awareness of their bodies and drew attention to their provocative sexuality, together conveying a new form of American naturalism.

         These gestures, the relaxed posture, the studied inarticulateness, a calculated detachment, a certain angle of descent, merge with elements of the cool, a powerful metaphor for twentieth-century life. John Szwed, So What: The Life of Miles Davis

Miles Davis has been hailed as a fashion icon for decades. The creator of Birth of the Cool has been placed on innumerable Fashion Hall of Fame lists.  His style has ranged from Brooks Brothers prep to African-inspired dress.  Pity there isn't a photo of him from the 1961 Randall Island festival. In April 1961 GQ chose Davis as “Fashion Personality of the Month; Esquire named Davis one the best dressed men in America in 1960. No one played the trumpet like him, no one embodied cool with such throwaway ease.  Listen to some of his classic pieces.

Oscar Wilde

People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial.  That may be so.  But at least it is not so superficial as Thought.  To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders.  It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.  The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.  Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Fashionable is what one wears oneself.  Unfashionable is what other people wear.

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

The only way to atone for being a little over dressed is by always being absolutely over-educated.

A really well made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.

Wilde's statements on dress are the inspiration for this blog.  I love the way he embraces fashion--unapologetically and unabashedly.  All the photographs on this page were taken by Napoleon Sarony during Wilde's 1882 American Lecture tour.He excels in disrupting surfaces. In two of the photos he wears a great fur coat which he acquired for the tour. These photos also show the great pains he took with his hair.The aphorisms above are taken from Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young. If anyone ever tells you that your interest in clothes is frivolous, tell them to read Oscar Wilde.