The Dandy: Dressing in Defiance

He cuts a fine figure, walking down the street. Whether it's a bow tie and a sharp suit, perfectly curated clashing colours, or a moustache with every hair strictly held in place - this is a person who spends hours on their look. But why? In this episode of Betwixt the Sheets, Kate is joined by Peter K. Andersson, author of ‘The Dandy” A People’s History of Sartorial Splendour’. Together they discuss the motivations for the dapper dress of the dandy. This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:10Speaker 02

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• 2:18Kate Lister?

  Hello my lovely Betwixters, it's me Kate Lister. You are here, I am here and we're listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Apart from me, who is presenting or hosting. What am I doing on Betwixt the Sheets? Anyway, I'm here and you're here and the guest is here and that's a really important thing. But before we can continue, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. And if you're not, if any juniors have snuck in here, be off with you. I don't need your mums writing me angry letters in the morning. Right, for everyone else, on with the show.

• 3:03Kate Lister?

  Good morning Betwixters. You want to snooze the alarm? No chance. We need to bathe, shave and clean our teeth. Then, we need the time to select an outfit. Clean lines, sharp shoes, a snazzy elaborate knotted cravat of course. No detail can be ignored. Colours must be very carefully thought out and then we have to select and polish our shoes. This is a whole regimen. There will be no throwing on your sweats and going about your day here. All of this actually normally takes about five hours, so we had best get cracking. I do hope that the help polished my boots and got my riding crop ready. Honestly, you can't get the staff these days.

• 3:46Kate Lister?

  Come on, chop, chop appearances, everything.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  What do you look for in a man?

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Oh, money of course.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

• 4:01Speaker 05

  I make perfect compliments of whatever my boss needs by just turning the knob and pushing the button.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

• 4:16Speaker 06

  Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, d'ry.

• 4:25Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. The dandy, defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as, "One who studies above everything to dress elegantly and fashionably." You might be thinking about Bo Brummel, whose motto in Regency Britain was, "Don't talk about clothes, let your clothes do the talking." You might be thinking of all the stars on the red carpet of the 2025 Met Gala, the theme of which was tailored for you, and the exhibition that inspired it was Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, which was heavily influenced by black dandyism. But what is dandyism? What must one do to become a dandy?

• 5:07Kate Lister?

  Do you have to be a man? Is that the rule? Can girlies be dandies too? Is sexuality relevant? And is it only for rich people? Today, I'm joined by historian Peter Anderson, who is the author of The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour. And if anyone can help us out with this one, it's him. Right, back straight, chin up, let's do this.

• 5:34Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Peter Anderson. How are you doing?

• 5:42Speaker 07

  I'm doing well. How are you?

• 5:43Kate Lister?

  I'm thrilled to be talking to you. That's how I am. I mean, how, how perfect is this? A mere days after the Met Gala, and here I am, talking to the author of the new book, The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour. Are you a fan of the Met? Were you aware of the Met and their theme of dandyism?

• 6:03Speaker 07

  Not really, no. I mean, I was aware that they would have this theme this year and so on, but I'm not a, I don't really keep track of the fashion world and those kinds of things.

• 6:14Kate Lister?

  Quite right. And if they didn't invite you to the event, then sod them, quite frankly.

• 6:17Speaker 07

  Yes, exactly, yes.

• 6:19Kate Lister?

  Right? Who cares about them? But their theme was was black dandism and you researched the history of dandism. Or what brought you to this area of research? Do you remember when you first thought, I'm I'm going to write a book about the dandy?

• 6:34Speaker 07

  Yes, I think it's it's taken shape over quite a long time. I mean, I start in the book by by describing my sort of autobiographical reasons for for writing the book, which goes back to me in my teens, trying to dress differently from everyone else in the schoolyard and, you know, being fond of bow ties and tweed jackets and so on. So there is something there, something very deep inside of me. But but then also, while working as a historian, I've been a historian now for for some time. And and I've come back to this topic now and then, writing about different types of dandism, mainly in the in the Victorian period, but but also in other eras.

• 7:18Kate Lister?

  Would you consider yourself to be a dandy still or a recovering dandy?

• 7:22Speaker 07

  Ah, recovering, I should say. It was something that was very important to me as a young man to sort of create my identity and sort of learn who I was. But now I'm more sort of comfortable in in who I am. I know who I am. So so it's more like, I mean, the interest is still there. I still take an interest in bow ties and and dress and so on, but but in a different way. I'm more relaxed now.

• 7:48Kate Lister?

  We should probably start with the most obvious question. What is a dandy and when did they emerge?

• 7:56Speaker 07

  Yes, that's a very good question. And I think it's not very easy to answer always because the point of my book as well is to change perhaps a bit the definition of the dandy from this more sort of aristocratic intellectual type that the dandy is commonly portrayed as to something more widespread, more popular. So that's the sort of main gist of my book, to to write about popular dandism, as I call it. But I think if if, I mean, the common definition of the dandy is a man who dresses distinctively, who cares a lot about his appearance, and perhaps also who has a sort of aristocratic air about himself.

• 8:38Speaker 07

  And this historical definition, of course, goes back to the the Regency period, the early 19th century, when the term

• 8:47Speaker 07

  Becomes established as denoting a man of fashion or a man who who dresses well. And it's mainly connected to the man called Beau Brummel, who is maybe one of those, still one of the most famous dandies in history.

• 9:01Kate Lister?

  With obviously with the Met Gala, not that we care about it, but I was like trying to think to myself, what is a dandy? They they it was a fashion thing that emerged, as you said, the regency period, but what would be the diff? How would you define them? They are it's it's a lot of tailoring and it's a lot of sort of lines across the body and emphasizing it, but they're different from like fops and macaronis, aren't they? Could you explain to us who they are?

• 9:29Speaker 07

  I mean, there are a lot of precursors to the dandy, especially in the 18th century. But I mean, you can go back even further to like the Lysimbeatham period and Gallants and and so on. Some some of them are are sort of parodied by Shakespeare. So this sort of male dress culture certainly exists. I mean, there are even people who claim that there was some form of dandyism in ancient Rome and so on. There is something about the modern period when things start to change and the male fashion especially starts to begin this process towards some sort of homogenization, toning down the colors and so on. And Beau Brummel is often identified as the man who sort of introduced the black

• 10:13Speaker 07

  suit, who who was, I mean, he was extravagant in some ways, but his dress sense was quite toned down and quite sort of sober. So that's also part of the birth of dandyism, so to speak.

• 10:26Kate Lister?

  We should probably talk about Beau Brummel. I mean, he's a name that even today, it it conjures up the idea of somebody that's really into fashion, someone that's quite extravagant, but he's probably somebody that the general population don't really know very much about. So who was he?

• 10:41Speaker 07

  He was a soldier to begin with, but but he was also a man who sort of lingered about the royal court in that period. And he was a personal friend of of of the prince and and so on. So he was very sort of high up in society, but at the same Same time, he was a troubled man. He became very much in debt. When he died, not very old, he was penniless and indebted and so on. So in that way, a very much stereotypical dandy in the way that he cared very much about his appearance. It was said that he took hours to dress every morning, but also living quite a sort of superficial, short-minded existence in a way.

• 11:23Kate Lister?

  Was he a writer? Did he write anything? Or is he literally just famous for looking sharp?

• 11:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, he was one of those, you know, famous for being famous.

• 11:31Kate Lister?

  Famous for being famous.

• 11:33Speaker 07

  But then later in the 19th century, we have all these other people who are called dandies. And dandism becomes more associated with literary men. So we have Lord Byron and we have Baudelaire and eventually, of course, Oscar Wilde and so on.

• 11:50Kate Lister?

  Do you think Lord Byron was a dandy? I've never thought about him in those terms.

• 11:54Speaker 07

  It's been said that he had that sort of style, at least at some point in his life. There was a certain way about his way of dressing and so on that was connected to dandism in a way.

• 12:05Kate Lister?

  Where did the word dandy come from? Is that something that Beau Brummel himself would have said that he was?

• 12:11Speaker 07

  I don't think he would have called himself a dandy, but the term becomes sort of established around the time when he's famous, or really it becomes a term established after his death, really. But the word dandy, you can find it in the 18th century. It probably derives from the American folk song Yankee Doodle Dandy.

• 12:33Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 12:34Speaker 07

  From the beginning, it has the sort of the associations with well-dressed men or men who take care of their appearances and so on. But also, dandy had a completely different meaning because it was a word used about Anglo-Indian boatmen in India. When you look through newspapers in the early years of the 19th century, the most common use of the word dandy is to describe these boatmen. So it's a bit strange. So it doesn't seem to become common until the 1810s. I begin my book around 1818, when the dandy becomes a sort of craze. It becomes a sort of more widespread phenomenon, especially in England.

• 13:18Kate Lister?

  One of the features, apart from being incredibly well dressed and tailored to the nines, seems to be like a merging between masculine and feminine, the way that the macaronis and the fops, there's something effeminate about the dandy. Would you say that that's true or not?

• 13:37Speaker 07

  Yes, I mean, that's, that's often the sort of criticism directed towards dandies, that they're sort of effeminate men. And that's interesting, because the dandy is very paradoxical, it's very complex. The dandy as a character is full of contradictions. I mean, he's both upper class and lower class, he's both effeminate and masculine. So it's a bit difficult to pinpoint. But the criticism towards dandies has always been, I mean, up until our age, really, that they're effeminate and to think too much about how they dress and so on is something that men shouldn't do. And so the sort of effeminate criticism has been continuous. But at the same time, dandies

• 14:20Speaker 07

  have been criticised for being womanises, for being very sort of masculine and, and women are attracted to them and so on. So it's very paradoxical, really.

• 14:30Kate Lister?

  Was there a sort of a personality affectation that goes along with this particular style? I'm thinking of the way they're like, you know, modern day goths, then, then, you know, they have a whole personality that goes with it, and so do punks. And, and would you, what was the personality of the dandy to make the whole package complete?

• 14:49Speaker 07

  There are certain characteristics that accompany the dandy, and it's often a sort of affected upper class behaviour, a certain way of, of talking perhaps. And, and these things are often associated with dandyism, especially when dandies are being criticised in the press or in books. The thing about my book is, is that, that I want to get away from the common sort of stereotypical notion of the dandy. We have this idea of the dandy being from the upper middle class, perhaps, or even the aristocracy, being famous authors, painters and so on. And what my book is about is the lower class

• 15:31Speaker 07

  dandy. So, so it's about how dandyism has been a continuous sort of subculture among men from the lower strata of society.

• 15:40Kate Lister?

  We should definitely talk about class because one of the the features of the dandies, they appear to look upper class, they appear to look wealthy and rich, but then obviously that's accessible to only the most elite. So how did working class men access the the dandy image?

• 16:00Speaker 07

  It becomes more easy in the 19th century, thanks to confectionery and mass production of of clothing and so on, but also the fact that more sort of low end tailors become more accessible. And of course, there is a rise of the lower middle class, the the shop assistants, office clerks, apprentices, domestic servants, that's the type of sort of white collar workers, if you if you like, that aspire to be become dandies in the 19th century especially.

• 16:31Kate Lister?

  Do you think this was about aping the upper classes, about trying to be an upper class, or are they doing something different with it?

• 16:39Speaker 07

  I think it's something different. I mean, the the common criticism that you find in sources from the 19th century is exactly that, they're trying to ape their betters, as they say, and they're not doing a very good job with it. So so that's the sort of main criticism. I think these dandies were well aware that they didn't look like aristocratic men, because they dressed differently. They had a more, what was called a more vulgar style, they were more flamboyant, it was like a plaid trousers and big bow ties and so on. I mean, they did dress differently. So so in a way, I think they perhaps parodied the upper classes as well. And that's also one of these interesting contradictions about

• 17:23Speaker 07

  the dandy, because he's a simultaneous parody and imitation. I mean, of course, there was something in it that aspired to something better than the lot that these men had, but there's also a sort of pride in their own identity, which makes them almost parody the style that they're also imitating, if you see what I mean.

• 17:44Kate Lister?

  So it's a defiance, a sort of maybe even a rebellion?

• 17:48Speaker 07

  Oh, yes, absolutely, absolutely. And this of course comes across very expressly in the black dandy. Because if you look at the United States, black dandyism is becomes widespread among the freed slaves, the African American men who moved to the North American cities from the South and it becomes a sort of subculture among them to to dress flamboyantly, to dress in in bright colours, in a way that is of course very much derided because it becomes a sort of racist stereotype at the same time. But there is also this this pride and this hunger for dressing up among these very materially deprived former slaves.

• 18:33Speaker 07

  So there is very much a defiance in that particular form of dandyism.

• 18:43Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Peter and Dandies after this short break.

• 18:59Kate Lister?

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• 20:22Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at G O O dot G L E slash Workspace with Gemini. That's G O O dot G L E slash Workspace with Gemini.

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• 21:25Speaker 02

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• 22:13Kate Lister?

  I've seen propaganda from America in the mid 19th century of mocking the black dandy, this sort of a figure called Dandy Jim or something they were calling him. And you do see the levels of threat that this figure posed, a well-dressed, a well-dressed black man that wasn't being quiet, I think. Maybe that was the threat because they are by their very definition noticeable.

• 22:41Speaker 07

  Oh, yes, exactly. And of course, they were a threat and they were very, there's a lot of concern in the press all through the 19th century about these black dandies. Because at least the ones who are written about, they didn't behave very meekly. They were quite forthright. There are even a lot of newspaper items that report about events that could, you know, it's almost a Rosa Parks situation. It's a, it's a black man who is very dandyishly dressed and he is sitting in the ladies' carriage in a train or he's sitting in a streetcar together with other white people and he refuses to move. So a lot of those situations arise in the 19th century.

• 23:26Speaker 07

  And of course, there is a sort of sense here that they want to live a life like the white people. And so there is a very clear defiance in that. When you look at Europe at the same time, there was also very much concern about the lower-class dandies there because they were also from a very, a new category in society, the lower-middle class, the sort of young men who had a bit more money than they used to. And their sort of, their political orientation was not accounted for. Who were they? What, were they a threat? Were they, were they labourers? Were they middle-class men and so on? So you couldn't quite categorize these men and that's also a sort of concern.

• 24:09Kate Lister?

  A completely off-the-wall question, but do you think that what happened with the French Revolution impacted this fear of the working classes, of the lower orders aping the aristocracy a few decades later?

• 24:22Speaker 07

  Yes, yes, I think, I think quite a lot of it has to do with that. And of course, the already in the, in revolutionary era, Paris and France in the 18th century, you have these types of men who dress quite distinctively and who become a sort of precursor to the, to the lower class dandy. I mean, we have, in the 18th century, we have precursors among the aristocracy and, and rich people, like the macaronis and the fops and so on. But you also have precursors among labourers and shopmen and so on, who dress distinctively as a sort of defiance already. So there is sort of social antagonism going on that sort of spills into the 19th century, definitely.

• 25:07Kate Lister?

  I was thinking as well, not that we care about the Met Gala, but the fact that this is a very male fashion, and I was wondering, were there female dandies, dandyettes or dandy adjacents, dandy groupies?

• 25:22Speaker 07

  That's a very good question, because I mean, of course, when we speak about dandies commonly, we speak about men, because among, if we look at female fashion history and so on, there is, there is so much other things, other terms and so on, that, that you can look at. But actually, the, if you look at these different types of dandy subcultures that I have focused on, you can find, sometimes at least, female counterparts. So already when, when the word dandy becomes a common thing in the 1810s, people start talking about dandyettes as well.

• 25:56Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 25:57Speaker 07

  But, but it's, it's quite a short-lived phenomenon, and it's not that common to speak about women in those terms. But when you look further on in, in the, in the 20th century, for instance, you can find, I have a chapter in my book about transgender dandies in interwar Paris and Berlin, because it was very common in that subculture to dress in male garb, like tuxedos, smoking cigarettes, wearing a monocle in one eye, that sort of thing. And then if you continue, you can find very interesting subculture, the teddy girls. In the nineteen fifties in in England. Of course, a female counterpart of the teddy boy, but they had their own style.

• 26:40Speaker 07

  They had they had the drape jackets, just the same as the teddy boys, but they also had bootleg bow ties and scarves, jeans that were sort of folded up at the bottom and so on. So so, yeah, a sort of female take on different dandy styles have have been there now and then. Yes.

• 27:00Kate Lister?

  Well, we're definitely coming back to the transgender dandies of the interwar period. But before we get to them, can we talk about Oscar Wilde? Because I'm endlessly fascinated by Oscar and the look like I'm on first name terms with him. But like the the culture that he existed within and seems to have surrounded himself within. I've definitely heard the word dandy applied to him. And I was wondering, what are your thoughts on Oscar Wilde and the the dandy culture?

• 27:31Speaker 07

  Well, in his age, I mean, the dandy culture that emerges in the Regency period is very much of that era. And then when you continue through the nineteenth century, at least when we look at British culture, the dandy has different appellations. So there are swells, there are gents. And when we come to the end of the nineteenth century and Oscar Wilde's era, people talk very, very much about mashers. But this is a culture that is completely different and and separate from, you know, the aestheticism and the intellectual culture that surrounded a man like Oscar Wilde.

• 28:12Speaker 07

  So so in my book, I don't write very much about Oscar Wilde or any of those famous dandies, so to speak. I look at the unknown dandies, especially the mashers, which were a very common and very derided group of men in in the eighteen eighties.

• 28:28Kate Lister?

  I've never heard of the mashers. Can you tell us who they were?

• 28:32Speaker 07

  The mashers were it was a term for dandies on both sides of the Atlantic, really, but but especially in in London. And in the eighteen eighties. They emerge as a sort of group of of young men. Maybe they have, you know, rich parents. Maybe they are clerks or apprentices or shop assistants. And they start to visit the new types of theatres that exist in London, like the Gayety Theatre, where the main sort of attraction is scantily clad girls. That'll do it. Yes. And it seems like the sudden appearance of of these girls on stage,

• 29:16Speaker 07

  it's like these young men, they can't handle it. They they become wild. They become crazy. And a masher is a man who thinks he has a relationship with one of these girls. So he he's he's fallen in love with one of these girls. And he goes to the theatre continuously, trying to sort of pick her up or or trying to start a relationship with her. And it's quite, you know, it's a culture of ogling. It's it's very much sort of the male gaze and so on. Wow. And these men, these mashers, dressed in in certain ways, and they were very much dandies. So it's a it's a phenomenon that that is quite famous when you look at the the late Victorian era.

• 30:01Speaker 07

  But but then strangely, the masher becomes something else when you come to the eighteen nineties, because the eighteen nineties, you have different fashions. And then you find mashers all around Europe, really. Even in even in Sweden, where I come from, there was a certain type of masher. And they they all through Europe, they dressed in a very distinctive way. They had extremely small bowler hats. They had extremely wide trousers. I mean, extremely wide. They had pointed yellow shoes. You had to have a monocle. That's a look. Yeah, and you had to have a walking stick that was extremely thick and short.

• 30:42Speaker 07

  And it was it was supposed to be very clear that it was not for walking. It was just you you just held it. So it was a very distinctive type of fashion there. And this fashion, of course, is completely separate from the upper middle classes, writers, intellectuals, they they they all deride the mashers, and they all hate them. And mainly, when you when you study this topic, what you find in in sources from this era. Is the criticism of it, it's the caricatures and the parodies of them.

• 31:15Kate Lister?

  You wouldn't miss that, would you, if someone was walking down the street, you'd notice that person?

• 31:20Speaker 07

  Oh, absolutely. And I think actually this look did a bit go into the creation of the modern circus clown. Because when you think about it, they must have looked like clowns. And when you look at circus clowns in this age, they start out as a sort of parodying the masher. So it's, yeah, there's some entanglement going on there.

• 31:43Kate Lister?

  Wow, that never even occurred to me before. One of the things your book is doing is breaking down what we mean by dandy and making it, I suppose, a broader definition. But I'm wondering, how do you do that? Because if you're looking at the masher culture and the teddy boy culture and the interwar transgender culture, what is it that you're looking through, throughout all of these different times and periods and cultures? That makes you go, that's still a dandy, that's not something separate from dandyism?

• 32:14Speaker 07

  I suppose all of these groups were at some point called dandies, even though that was not the main use of them. But I see what you mean, because there isn't one clear definition of the dandy. And all these different groups that I look at, they have something in common. And I think what I identify as the thing that they have in common is that they do different types with the male suit. They all wear jacket and tie. So there is some fundamental dress that they do different things to. And it's a sort of commentary on this very simple way of dressing, that they add different things to it.

• 32:57Speaker 07

  Different subcultures are defined by different accessories. So some have monocles, some wear moustaches, some have a special type of walking stick and so on. So there's always something special, but the essence of it is always the suit. So I think that's the sort of running thread that I do to hold this together. And of course, I mean, if you do, if you write a book like this, the obvious term to use as a title is the dandy, because that's then everyone knows what we're talking about, even if they were called a lot of different things.

• 33:41Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Peter and Dandies after this short break.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 34:32Speaker 02

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• 35:20Kate Lister?

  The interwar period that you touched on very briefly there, that's fascinating, especially if you are looking in Berlin and in Paris, because you get this emergence of what historians often call a decadent time period, by which they mean the gays were out. It tends to be. That's what, that's what was happening.

• 35:39Speaker 07

  Yeah. Which would be almost all time periods, really, but.

• 35:42Kate Lister?

  It could be, couldn't it?

• 35:45Kate Lister?

  But how does sexuality play into this idea of the dandy? Because that that seems to have been quite a big thing, especially in the interwar period, the lesbian clubs with the monocles, for example, in Paris.

• 35:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, as we said earlier, the the effeminacy of the dandy has been a sort of criticism directed towards it all the time. And also the sort of associations with homosexuality are there from the start. But the very sort of, it's very difficult to talk about it in the 19th century. There is one case of what seems to have been a male brothel, a homosexual brothel that is

• 36:23Kate Lister?

  Hello.

• 36:23Speaker 07

  found out in in 1818 in London. And all these men who are found there are described as dandies and so on. But then the newspapers, they are very sort of, oh, we can't write about this. We can't give you any details because it's so horrible. It's so immoral and so on. So so you can't really find out that much about it, unfortunately.

• 36:46Kate Lister?

  That's frustrating.

• 36:48Speaker 07

  Yes, and of course, these these men, the sort of legal repercussions are horrible, to say the least. So it's quite a sad story. But but so so this thing has been there in the background all the time. And in the in the interwar period, and you have, you have, of course, Berlin and the Weimar Republic, which was more more of a sort of liberal era in German history. And I talk about Paris as well, because one particularly famous lesbian nightclub, Le Monocle, existed there, even though it was strictly illegal for women to to dress like men. And it's a it's a complicated issue, because, of course, there were there were homosexual women who did not dress like men.

• 37:31Speaker 07

  There were women who dressed like men who perhaps were not homosexual and so on. So it's a complicated subculture. But there seems to have existed this this culture at the time. And it seems to have been very much connected to the emergence of the tuxedo, which becomes common in the interwar period among men. But it seems to be sort of, it's such an extreme type of clothes, in a way. So so it becomes parodied from the very start and associated with transgender dandies or lesbian dandies.

• 38:06Kate Lister?

  I'm interested to hear you talk about the teddy boys as being dandies. I don't know if this is just the teddy boys in the north of England where I am. But they had a reputation as being quite violent.

• 38:17Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 38:18Kate Lister?

  They like, they weren't effeminate and gentle. They were out getting into fights with people.

• 38:24Speaker 07

  Yeah. And that's also a thing that that becomes more and more common. And it's, it's of course, related in a way to the effeminacy and the homosexuality. Because since a lot of lower class men were dandies already in the 19th century. This effeminacy had to be sort of thwarted by emphasizing masculinity. So paradoxically, dandism already in the late 19th century becomes associated with the type of clothes that criminals wear, with with gangs and so on. I mean, you have the Peaky Blinders and all that sort of thing. And there is a certain dandism in that, of course. So this strange contradiction in that the effeminit dandy is also something that has to do with

• 39:10Speaker 07

  with criminals, with pickpockets and everything. And this is very much present in in the teddy boys. But I think also what I'm looking at in the my chapter about teddy boys and teddy girls is that there was a lot of fuss about nothing. I mean, sometimes there were there were the Notting Hill riots and so on. But a lot of the early teddy boys seems to have been quite meek little boys who liked to dress in in an Edwardian jacket and so on.

• 39:35Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 39:37Speaker 07

  So it's, yeah, it's a complicated culture, that one as well.

• 39:41Kate Lister?

  Just in case anyone's listening who doesn't know what a teddy boy is. Could you describe a typical teddy boy look for me? How would, if we saw him walk down the street, you'd say that's a teddy boy?

• 39:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the stereotype about the teddy boy is that he had the sort of rockabilly hairstyle along with a long, wide-shouldered jacket. That was, maybe not wide-shouldered, that's more the zoot suit. But but at least something that's smacked of the Edwardian period. That's why they were called teddy boys, because they wanted to dress in an Edwardian style.

• 40:14Kate Lister?

  Oh, look at that. Right.

• 40:17Speaker 07

  But but I mean, I think when you see actual images of teddy boys from the early 1950s, it's not that distinctive, really. I mean, they seem more to dress like. They have their jackets and maybe under the jacket, they have a cardigan and a tie. So they're just, they're just very sort of working class boys who dress more conservatively, really.

• 40:42Kate Lister?

  So as a final talking point, then, I suppose we've got to ask you is where did the dandy go? Are they still with us? I mean, we don't wear suits on a day to day basis anymore, at least most of us don't. Are there still cultural movements embracing the dandy?

• 41:01Speaker 07

  I conclude the book by claiming a bit carefully that maybe this type of popular dandyism, that I call it, has almost died out. I mean, the last chapter in my book is about the new romantics in the early nineteen eighties.

• 41:16Kate Lister?

  Oh, yes, yes, them.

• 41:18Speaker 07

  And there is a very clear flirtation with regency dandyism in that subculture, dressing up like highwaymen or pirates or whatever. And they were called dandies as well. But then afterwards, after that, in the nineteen nineties, nineteen nineties, when I grew up and when I tried to be a dandy, it was a wasteland.

• 41:41Speaker 07

  Well, not really, but, but I mean, there are stirrings of it. And of course, I look at, at Sub-Saharan Africa, where dandyism is still very much alive.

• 41:51Kate Lister?

  Yes, of course.

• 41:53Speaker 07

  In the, in the, in the two Congos and, and also in South Africa with the Swenkes and so on. It was at least a big thing in the seventies, eighties, nineties, and I think it still exists, but maybe not as much as earlier. I have a, I have a sort of hypothesis that maybe the hipster is the dandy of the twenty first century. Also a man who cares a lot about his appearance.

• 42:16Kate Lister?

  Yes, quite stylized.

• 42:18Speaker 07

  Up to date, but it's, it has nothing to do with a suit or anything like that. It's more a sort of stylized working class dress.

• 42:26Kate Lister?

  It's like suit adjacent, like I've seen them with braces and shirts. Isn't that interesting that in the, the earlier dandies, it's about imitating and satirizing the upper classes. But so with someone like the hipster, it's actually performing working class fashion.

• 42:43Speaker 07

  Yes, yes, I think you've nailed it there, actually. I think there is, we've, we've just swapped it. A hundred, a hundred and fifty years ago, people were looking upwards, now we're looking

• 42:53Kate Lister?

  Now we're not.

• 42:54Speaker 07

  So I, and I think what I'm sort of charting in the book is also the, the change from this more sort of conservative, disciplined male ideal towards a more sort of informal, loose, cool male ideal. So, so there is some sort of transition going on there.

• 43:14Kate Lister?

  There certainly is. Oh, Peter, you have been fascinating to talk to. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 43:23Speaker 07

  Well, they can find my book, which is coming out.

• 43:26Kate Lister?

  Give us the full title again.

• 43:27Speaker 07

  It's The Dandy, A People's History of Sartorial Splendour. So that's very much the, it's a people's history of dandyism, which I wanted to, to write.

• 43:37Kate Lister?

  And are you on social media or are you smarter than that?

• 43:40Speaker 07

  I'm smarter than that.

• 43:41Kate Lister?

  Excellent, well done.

• 43:42Speaker 07

  I, I work at a museum. I work at the Museum of Cultural History in Lund. So if you're touristing in Sweden this summer, that's the place to go.

• 43:51Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself.

• 43:55Speaker 07

  Thank you for having me.

• 44:01Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Peter for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. Coming up, we've got episodes on what made you ugly in the Tudor and Victorian eras, and we are heading back to find out about the history of the contraceptive pill. This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 45:23Speaker 09

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