Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1919 — Days of the “Dandy” Over and Cause Is Ascribed to Degeneration of Costume [ARTICLE]

Days of the “Dandy” Over and Cause Is Ascribed to Degeneration of Costume

It ‘' a deplorable tact, but the reign of the dandy is over. He died with?. Barbe t d’Aurevilly, who had other interests and' occupations than his era--vats and laces,-end was rather an amateur than a practitioner in the art, writes Arthur Symans, in New Republic. The cause, or a large part of it. Is the degeneration of costume. A man can be well (Tressed, in the afternoon if not ii> the evening, when themode leaves an inch of choice hereand there between one curveor another. But variety and elegance havegone wholly out of the best-cut coat, the more carefully calculated trousers. With knee-breeches and silk stockings and buckle shoes went every incitement to dress personally and to outdo others in what was not a fixed fashion. What form or substance of" things could a dandy, in these days, find to work upon 1 The tying of a white linen tie is no longer an art? the stock, with its dignity, has given place to the high, hideous, shining and uncomfortable starched collar. And the dullness of the things that men. wear —the shapeless black-funnel with its inch of irrelevant brim which we cram discomfortably on our heads I What dandy dare make himself conspicuous by even the extension of a brim, or the loosening of those bandages of cloth which wrap our body with a graceless rigidity?