He wasn't yet dressing so gorgeously when I was in high school. That was still Southernplayalisticadillacfunkymusic years.
Well, the whole mod/northern soul/2 tone/skinhead/etc tradition is basically a lot of pasty Brits dressing like either James Brown in 1962 or else, Italians.
Also the Teddy Girls of the 50s, looking fabulous.
2: I meant in the photo essay.
Academia is not the first, let alone the only, place I'd go to look for sharp-dressed dudes of whatever further description. (Perhaps excepting departments of art history and a few others.)
Black Dandyism remains common in the legal profession. Because in the courthouse, the Black guy whose suit doesn't fit is generally called "defendant."
That I ought to dress like...
Catholic schoolgirl?
We had a sharp-dressed young black guy (three-piece suit! piano-playing!) run in my city council district this year. He was embarrassingly unqualified, though; he lost to another black candidate.
I own but have only read part of Slaves To Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity - but I can say confidently that it has one of the most compelling covers that I've ever seen. The essay on Yinka Shonibare didn't really grab me but the "modernist aesthetics" part looks good.
Also, Sharon P. Holland is cute. And her entire house seems incredibly enviable, as does her wardrobe. That high-collared shirt in the last couple of shots is really good. And it's interesting that a tie I'd normally regard as both a little bit wide and a little bit exuberant looks so Brummelish/ascot-ish on her. I could never wear a tie with a pattern like that; on me it would not recall the early 19th century but the loud seventies.
Her book Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country looks pretty interesting too - I mean, she has more than one book, of course.
Yeah, Sharon Holland has got it goin' on.
Oh, hey, the author of that book is an old friend of mine--I'll tell her that Frowner really liked the cover!
I am a little uncomfortable with most white-people enthusiasm for African-American dress/self-adornment/etc. Too often it smacks of "They're so vital! So expressive! So unrepressed! Their emotions are so much realer than my parents'!"* or, worse, overcompensating praise ("What an adorable baby! So much better than my boring old pinkish-white baby. Just gorgeous. I wish I had a black baby.").
* [Unarticulated thought about nerdy white style bloggers' enthusiasm for the macho vaingloriousness of hiphop (e.g., Fuck Yeah Menswear) goes here.]
I am a little uncomfortable with most white-people enthusiasm for African-American dress/self-adornment/etc. Too often it smacks of "They're so vital! So expressive! So unrepressed! Their emotions are so much realer than my parents'!"* or, worse, overcompensating praise ("What an adorable baby! So much better than my boring old pinkish-white baby. Just gorgeous. I wish I had a black baby.").
* [Unarticulated thought about nerdy white style bloggers' enthusiasm for the macho vaingloriousness of hiphop (e.g., Fuck Yeah Menswear) goes here.]
This documentary "The Swenkas" is very interesting.
I'm a little uncomfortable with most white-people dismissal of hiphop's smacho vainglorys.
Smacho Vainglorys is my favorite Brazilian MMA fighter.
18: Remember to pronounce the "r" like an "h."
That Monica Miller book looks fascinating.
Oh, hey, the author of that book is an old friend of mine--I'll tell her that Frowner really liked the cover!
The rest of the book seems likely to be pretty good! It's just that everyone notices the cover when they are looking at my books.
I am a little uncomfortable with most white-people enthusiasm for African-American dress/self-adornment/etc. Too often it smacks of "They're so vital! So expressive! So unrepressed! Their emotions are so much realer than my parents'!"* or, worse, overcompensating praise ("What an adorable baby! So much better than my boring old pinkish-white baby. Just gorgeous. I wish I had a black baby.").
See, I hear that - although I wonder if it was directed at my comment - but I also think that there's a way to acknowledge racial history and racial difference without falling into fetishization. Clothes are contextual - Dr. Holland looks like an alternate history Brummel in that tie while I'd look tacky not least because if I wore such a tie, the immediate cultural reference would be to loud seventies ties worn by white men. Similarly, I look elegantly butch (if I do say so myself) in clothes that would be boringly straight-workadaddy on a man - because the way the body is read changes the way the clothing is read. (And that's why I don't grow my hair long, even though I wish I could wear retro nineties-guy long hair; on me it reads as girly.)
Now, men's fashion and butch dandyism happen to be hobbies of mine, so I'll also say that queer dandyism and dandyism by people of color tend IMO to differ from straight men's fashion in that they tend to be much more destabilizing, satiric, witty, consciously allusive - even when some of the same sorts of clothing are deployed. You can see this in men's style blogs - virtually all of the dandyish, preppy or "gentleman's" style blogs whose writers and audience are mostly straight white guys are politically conservative, occasionally overtly racist, frequently overtly homophobic and openly admiring of really dubious people like the Duke of Windsor. The writers are nostalgic for the past because they imagine themselves as well-off men about town with fancy gents' suitings and nice leathergoods. Fashion blogs aimed at queer folks or people of color generally don't have this same nostalgia or the same conservatism, and they don't appeal to "style rules" nearly as much or fetishize 'quality'.
There are two apparently similar but underlyingly different men's/masculine-of-center-people fashion moments (movements? constituencies?): the straight and mostly-white one which fetishizes the "authentic" past, "quality" and the fashion "rules" of the past; and another one which may play with some of the same clothes and styles but which is fundamentally futuristic, not nostalgic, impure rather than "authentic".
No-one's mentioned Les Sapeurs yet!
http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/mediavilla/index.html
http://stylegourmand.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/voila-les-sapeurs.html
As per Alex in 3, there's a long tradition of British working class dandyism, too.
I totally dig Dr. Holland's upturned collar, and would like to ask what Dr. Gibson is brushing his chin area with and why.
people look most stylish when they dress against stereotype... I ought to dress like...
I was similarly puzzled by a 'cross-dressing' party once, and went in fatigues. (Which had my name and plausible insignia on them, because they were originally my dad's.)
25: Sally was just reading some steampunk thingie that apparently had a girl-crossdressing-as-a-boy-to-join-the-military in an alternate history WWI, and came to me to check whether that sort of thing actually ever happened; she was interested to find out that yes, not terribly often, but there are certainly plenty of precedents from Sweet Polly Oliver on down.
From the first link at 22: "It is very possible that dandies have existed for as long as time itself."
I don't understand how Les Sapeurs are supposed to be steampunk, but the links in 22 are really interesting.
The thing steampunk is handling pretty well, I think, is responding to (extremely well-founded) accusations of colonial orientalist fantasy by enlarging memory and imagination about who could have done what and been cool. They are claiming more of history as steampunk than makes any sense to anyone else.
Back to the original post -- isn't there a practically self-protective aspect to black dandyism? I tend to assume black guys are generally likely to dress a notch or two spiffier than white guys in similar socio-economic circumstances, and I always assumed, in an unexamined way, that it was at least somewhat about presenting oneself in a way likely to avoid racist reactions: the sartorial version of whistling classical music. And then once you're dressing thoughtfully at all, the potential for getting interested in it and getting seriously dandified is going to be there.
14: there was a horrible ditty my grandmother used to say about Asian babies being cuter than white babies but black babies were the cutest of all.
30: A light-skinned African-American guy whose father became a judge always dressed extra nice-- with a jacket and tie--when going to the airport at school vacations. He was quite explicit about the reason, although he also dressed pretty well at other times too.
13: Oh, Flippanter, you can unironically admit that my kids are the cutest. It's okay!
30: Actually, if you dress too nicely, you're automatically a pimp. If you want to more or less blend, the key is to dress like a schlubby working-class white guy.
29: Along-ish those lines, this was one of the comments on Les Sapeurs:
Mindful of Jha's post on Tor, I love the sort of counter-colonization of European men's fashion going on here. As noted, those suits are specific statements in a political dialog, but they're not necessarily an endorsement of anything European so much as a rejection of Sese Seko.
I read something relatively recently by a black professor of math(?) at Hopkins(?) about dressing more "professionally" so he wouldn't be perceived as out of place specifically when walking across campus. Since I'm not sure if it was math and/or Hopkins, though, Google isn't much help.
Great anecdote, huh?
21: frequently overtly homophobic
Not for nothing, but, you know, overtly homophobic guys who are really into fashion...
26: Scott Westerfield's Leviathan series.
I saw a very professorial looking African-American fellow on the bus a few weeks ago who was just the last word in spiffiness. I can't remember his whole outfit, but it included a nice waistcoat and a bow tie.
21: No, not at you: I was thinking of the reactions of some youngish style bloggers* to that photo essay and to the occasional images of sapeurs and "urban street style," and their Norman Mailer-ish "I wish I were black" tone, which seems disingenuous and condescending. I fear I'm being a bit paternalistic; I might react differently to that sort of thing if I were black.
* As you say, older writers observe a pretty consistent "if it ain't Euro-American (occasionally tailored in Hong Kong) and it ain't expensive, we don't care" editorial policy.
30 they are just a bit more artistic and temperamental, self-defence or not, in any kind of expression, jazz music, rap poetry, fashion, sports etc, while whites are more like reserved, calculating and generally like more rational/mathematically minded i guess
and there is nothing racist in there to observe so, there are objective differences which may or may not be genetical
one should just be proud of one's heritage,
to assert it's self-defence their dressing nicely would sound more racist, imo
i recalled a movie, about a black girl who was adopted to a white family and has some self-identity issues, it's very moving and as if like just a bit pitiful how she washes her hands and baths so frequently, tries to straighten her hair, that's how the movie shows her, she behaves just like any normal kid it would look like to me, for example, but for the unfogged audience she would look like behaving white i guess, so she always fights with her adopted mom, but in the end of the movie, their reconciliation scene in a diner is really heartwarming, she realizes that her mom is the only real mom for her, she'll become a good actress, such a small girl 7-8 yo in the movie i guess, pity, cant recall the movie title
when i read about thorn's daughters, sorry thorn, you talk about your family so i thought, i'd share that movie impression, that girl's problems with her self-identity, for now the girls are too small to realize anything i guess, and it is interesting how you think about this, but seems like thorn herself is adopted into a black family, so her daughters wouldnt feel themselves all alone with their questions i guess, just if there would be any such conflicts, it seems it's difficult for a child to overcome the self-identity issues, so maybe it's very important to teach the adopted kids of different race pride in their biological and cultural heritage from the very beginning, not try to eraze any differences
37: That's the stuff!
40.3: Pimp.
Since numbering is a bit off right now, it might be helpful if people quoted a bit more instead of just citing the number of a comment. I dunno. I just got confused by LB's comment which I assume is in response to Sir Kraab and not Natilo.
Oh, hey, speaking of black fashion, Nia's mom has indeed gotten a tattoo of Nia's (middle) name and birthdate, along the length of her inner arm. I'm pretty sure I called this or some variant at some point.
46: No, I was responding to LB's reference to Westerfield's recent trilogy, and she was responding to my response.
46 nobody deleted me yet i assure you if you mean that by your comment
hope i havent offended yet anybody too, but if i did inadvertently then sorry of course, i just said what i think as i always do
Semi-OT: Excellent work, Wells Fargo, destroying 50 years of African-American wealth.
"My parents bought an Eichler not because of the architecture or to impress anybody," he said. "They bought it because Joe Eichler was the only builder at the time who would sell to black families."
I never knew that. Good for Eichler.
I find that as a white man and a pimp, there are few sartorial choices that reflect my position in society.
