BRUMMELL

Beau Brummell is a mysterious model. Legend has made him the extravagant king of dandies. Not flamboyant in his appearance, the man is revolutionary in his austerity. The fashion of the times was with the Macaronis, these powdered young men in satin and velvet. Lord Lennox remarked that Beau Brummell was 'the most sober, the most strict, the least extravagant man’ he knew. 

Brummell’s style perhaps finds its origin in Eton’s uniform, the Montem: a dark blue coat with two rows of brass buttons, opening onto a pale cloth on the neck and the legs. Brocade and taffeta gave status then: he replaced them with broadcloth and linen. His asceticism invents a silhouette, close to womenswear in what it shows of the body. 

On top, a tawny grey waistcoat for the morning, a white one and the ubiquitous blue jacket for the evening. The coat had strong shoulders and a marked waist. The lapels reached the ears, all the way to the tie on top of the neck, forcing the one who wore it to look down at everything.  

Below, a suede culotte or pale trousers, worn without undergarments; hassian boots. 

The story goes he once remarked: ‘if John Bull turns around to look at you, you’re poorly dressed: either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable.’ 

More than the distinction of his dress, it is the rigor of his habit that made Brummell’s mark. The fashion historian Farid Chenoune writes that he was ‘impossible to imitate: there was nothing to copy.’ 

He was born without a title. His grandfather advises aristocrats in property; Brummell will furnish them with a discipline in style. At school, he meets the boy who is not yet George V. His friend gives him a regiment. The prince of Wales became regent in 1811, king in 1820. Brummell becomes coronet, then captain, then resigns. He drops by Oxford for a year. With the rigor of his style, it is his wit that one notices. As a child about to be punished with a stick, he would ‘cut them directly.’ Established in London, he gains ‘a reputation without equal in the art of cutting.’ White’s, Watier’s, Almack’s - clubs, socialites, and tailors are at his mercy. He makes wit a way of dressing; displaces the social stakes from court to town: the king comes to see him dress. Brummell operates the passage from an elitism of birth to an elitism of taste. In a small-print opuscule, Barbey d’Aurevilly will grant him a motto: ‘to disillusion rather than edify.’ More than new clothes, Brummell gives the time new rules.  

Il courts and cuts, calls George V ‘Big Ben.’ At a party, his acquaintance Alvanley enters with a man. Brummell asks, ‘Alvanley, who is your fat friend?’ - it is no other than the king. Beau is cast out, and leaves for Calais in 1816. His reputation gets him a consulate, which he abandons two years later. In and out of jail, he drowns in debt, dresses in rags. His clothes get darker, so as to hide stains and syphilis. It is perhaps to imitate his misery that Baudelaire will later prefer black. Destitute, french, the old king, he leaves behind a style that is no longer his, and a name that never was: ‘Beau’ will be the nickname of every fastidious young man. George Bryan Brummell, however, dies March 30th 1840.