Dandyism and Fashion 61In fact, the separation of the social classes was not abolished at
all: though defeated politically, the aristocrat still maintained a powerful
prestige, albeit one limited to lifestyle; and the bourgeois man also had
to defend himself, not against the worker (whose clothing remained
clearly marked), but against the rise of the middle classes. So clothing
had to cheat, as it were, the theoretical uniformity that the revolution
and Empire had bequeathed it; and within a universal type of clothing,
there was now a need to maintain a certain number of formal differences
which could exhibit the difference between social classes.
It is here that we see the appearance of a new aesthetic category
in clothing, destined for a long future (women’s clothing today is very
fond of this, as a cursory glance in any fashion magazine will show):
the detail. Since it was no longer possible to change the basic type of
clothing for men without affecting the democratic and work ethos, it
was the detail (the ‘next-to-nothing’, the ‘je ne sais quoi’, the ‘manner’,
etc.) which started to play the distinguishing role in clothing: the knot
on a cravat, the material of a shirt, the buttons on a waistcoat, the
buckle on a shoe, were from then on enough to highlight the narrowest
of social differences. at the same time, the superiority of status, which
for democratic reasons could no longer be advertised, was hidden and
sublimated beneath a new value: taste, or better still, as the word is
appropriately ambiguous, distinction.
a distinguished man is a man who marks himself off from the crowd
using modest means, but it is a means whose power, which is a kind of
energy, is immense. Since, on the one hand, his aim is to be recognized
only by his peers, and on the other, this recognition relies essentially
on details, the distinguished man adds to the uniform of his century a
number of discreet signs (that is, those that are both barely visible and
yet not in keeping with the outfit), which are no longer spectacular signs
of a condition that is openly adopted but the simple signs of a tacit
agreement. Indeed, distinction takes the signalling aspect of clothes
down a semi-clandestine path: for, on the one hand, the group that
reads its signs is a limited one, on the other the signs necessary for
this reading are rare and, without a particular knowledge of the new
vestimentary language, perceptible only with difficulty.
The dandy (and we are talking only about his clothing, as we know
that dandyism is more than simply vestimentary behaviour) is a man
who has decided to radicalize the distinction in men’s clothing by