The Chap’s Grand Silver Jubilee Ball was indeed a night of a thousand waistcoats. On Saturday 12th October 2024, three hundred immaculately dressed souls descended on Hamilton House in Balham, a region of the capital not generally known for decadent soirees. But this was a truly special night, for The Chap was celebrating 25 years…
Paul Stafford on keeping his mettle as the most flamboyant dresser in Belfast for the last thirty years. Photos by Lee Mitchell. Are you Belfast born and bred? I was born and bred in Belfast, growing up on the Falls Road in the west of the city. Carnaby Street it was not, but in spite…
Ahead of the Third Grand Flaneur Walk on Sunday 14th May 2023, we recall 2022’s dandified stroll sans destination. This year, after two years of not being permitted to wander anywhere, with or without destination, a large number of flaneurs pressed their pantaloons, polished their canes and cultivated new buttonholes again, in preparation for the…
A decade after Sebastian Horsley’s death, Gustav Temple recalls the decadent flash of dandyism that was extinguished on 17th June 2010 Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy. Charles Baudelaire, 1863 On this day ten years ago, Sebastian Horsley died aged 47 of a…
Nathaniel Adams: Oscar Wilde, writer, raconteur, gay icon, large of girth, lust and ego, bottom wobbling provocatively as he climbs the social ladder from the gutter to the stars, then falls back into the muck with a splash, is arguably the most famous dandy ever. In Oscar Wilde, dandyism found its apotheosis, and after his…
