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So if you haven’t heard, it’s that time again: The New Yorker is holding their 2008 Eustace Tilley Contest. Tilley, drawn by Rea Irvin (also responsible for the headline type) in 1925, has been famously rendered by the likes of Chris Ware, Robert Crumb, William Wegman, and others. The deadline for submissions is January 24th, and you can check out the competition here. In 2005, Louis Menand wrote about Tilley’s evolution and eventual deconstruction.
New Yorker readers have become used to him, but it’s not much clearer eighty years later what he’s supposed to represent. Beginning in 1994, efforts were made to do something to his image, which seems, after all, to have little connection to New York City. (Irvin derived it from an 1834 drawing of a Count D’Orsay, “man of Fashion in Early Victorian Period,” that he found reproduced in the costume section of the Encyclopædia Britannica.)
Hmm…If mental_floss were to have a Eustace Tilley, I’m trying to imagine what he would look like. He’d certainly surpass the cloying smarm-and-brimstone of Pocket Change’s Richard Nouveau. But here’s my primary question: it’s great that The New Yorker at once solicits and sends up their target demo in Tilley, but all I want to know is (& since we’ve covered the vicissitudes of nerd-dom to death): what, really, is a dandy after all?
According to Ogden Nash:
Candy is dandy
But liqour is quicker
posted by Chris Thorpe on 1-21-2008 at 11:11 am
A dandy is a fop is a toff. A stylish and snobby individual that is either upper class or want’s to give the impression of being upper class.
The first thing that pops to my mind when this term is used is Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot as played by David Suchet.
posted by Jason! on 1-21-2008 at 11:22 am
I think PG Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster is the quintessential fob-toff-dandy if ever there was one. and has one ever been so entertaining? Carry on, Jeeves
posted by The Allison on 1-21-2008 at 11:37 am
Holy Cow, Allison, that was uncanny. I just clicked on this thread to make the two word reply “Bertie Wooster” only to find that you beat me to it.
Well done, old sport, well done. ;)
posted by Ashley on 1-21-2008 at 12:33 pm
Would the modern equivalent be a metrosexual?
posted by Sue Dunham on 1-21-2008 at 1:59 pm
I’ve met a real modern-day one, in New Orleans! Google Aidan Gill for Men, and you can check him out…
posted by singlegrrl on 1-21-2008 at 2:55 pm
What ho, Wooster fans!
I would Bertie was more of a twit than a Dandy.
Oscar Wilde was a Dandy.
posted by Moon on 1-21-2008 at 3:28 pm
A dandy (also known as a fop) is a man excessively concerned with fashion. They can also play with their image, making themselves more feminine or masculine at will.
A side note to illustrate the point: the reference in Sweeney Todd:
“It’s fop, finest in the shop”.
posted by Amanda on 1-21-2008 at 3:52 pm
Oscar Wilde was indeed a dandy! Good point. Cory Countryman
posted by Cory Countryman on 1-21-2008 at 4:25 pm
I’m still peeved that Ask Jeeves got rid of Jeeves. The noive! He was a working dandy.
posted by Leslie on 1-21-2008 at 8:42 pm
Read Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and one will encounter dandy and dandy and dandy. Gray would be the dandiest dandy. But his friends qualify also — although they are not quite as dandy. (Sometimes they brought him candy when they were randy.)
okay, sorry. Dorian Gray has some vivid descriptions.
posted by WizardBoy on 1-22-2008 at 1:06 pm
The Scarlet Pimpernel was a screaming dandy
posted by imnotlistening on 1-22-2008 at 4:59 pm
Yeah, I used to use ask.com just because they had Jeeves as their “mascot”. Now I use Google. :(
I agree that Bertie is more of a twit than a dandy. He can’t seem to pick out fashionable attire for himself without Jeeves’ assistance.
posted by Kristen on 1-23-2008 at 11:38 pm
“If” mental_floss had a Eustace Tilly? What about Einstein?
posted by Sillstaw on 1-24-2008 at 1:34 pm
i see dandy as a lot more than just a fashionable man. oscar wilde was a dandy, following the footsteps of ‘beau’ brummel who’s been credited as ‘the first dandy’.
in short; i don’t consider dandy being just obsessed with fashion, it’s more of a lifestyle in which fashion (or creating a flawless style) played/plays a big role.
posted by maire on 2-11-2008 at 4:41 am