dandy girls

I was one of the lucky ones who got in at Bread&Butter Barcelona trade fair thanks to Trendwolves. If you are hungry for fashion trends, this is one of the best places to hunt them.

Looking at the next year's collections, I realized that the huge gap between yin and yang is no longer there, as the feminine and the masculine present in all of us seem to get along just fine for once. Designers have already presented a more masculine type of woman, bold enough to go for three-piece suits, or trenches with a masculine cut but this year, I saw for the first time the true revival of the dandy look for women. As I like it very much, I had the curiosity to dig for this trend's birth.

Once, the word dandy was a nickname for Parisian&British overly-groomed men living in the 18th-19th centuries. The charm of the dandies lied in their obsessive care on aesthetics, elegance and their noble aspiration to be sublime. Baudelaire was deeply interested in dandyism, and memorably wrote that a dandy aspirant must have "no profession other than elegance ... no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons ... The dandy must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he must live and sleep before a mirror." So that the others dress to live, he lives to dress. Nice, isn't it?

Beau Brummel is the most famous dandy of all times. He won fame in the early 19th century for his fastidious hygiene and inconspicuous dress: fitted navy jacket, crisp white shirt, and plain trousers, at a time when men of his station were partial to lace, brocade, and powdered hair. He was what we would call today an innovator, more than a trendsetter.

George Sand's reputation came into question when she began sporting men's clothing in public (19th century) — which she justified by the clothes being far sturdier and less expensive than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time. In addition to being comfortable, Sand's male dress enabled her to circulate more freely in Paris than most of her female contemporaries could, and gave her increased access to venues from which women were often barred. Also scandalous was Sand's smoking tobacco in public.

Romaine Brooks did her most amazing work from 1920 through 1924, painting portraits of women in blacks and grays. Brooks’s story reminds me that you may not know it at the time, but amazing things are just around the corner, you just need to get there. She is best known for her images of women in androgynous or masculine dress, including her self portrait, which is her most widely reproduced work.

Marlene Dietrich is famous for her dandysim: "I dress for myself. Not for the image, not for the public, not for the fashion, not for men."

Then was Sade.

As you can see, with time, dandyism became more than just a relic nickname for classy gentlemen. The lavish elegance so emblematic to Oscar Wilde’s writings has been reinvented to be one of next season's trendiest fashions for high class girls. One of my favorite is Janelle Monae. She is a perfect dandy of our times. Masculine shoes, bow tie, shoulder straps, she's got it all!

Take a look at Junya's Watanbe S/S 07 collection. It is incredibly dandy and beautiful.

As for products, fashion house Givenchy has launched along with makeup artist Nicolas Degennes a dandyism homage makeup collection including a lip & chic gloss shaped as a manly chained pocket watch. I love it.

We shouldn't forget that dandies, fops, and swells were also blurring the gender lines, both in dress and behavior. So, a female dandy could also be a dandy with no worries. Like the T. Rex lyrics say Girls will be boys / and boys will be girls / it's a mixed up world.