Nov
10
I have the same relationship with technological style as I do with my wife: Fascination and repulsion. Glowing cufflinks and the like are theoretically neat but the execution often leaves much to be desired. To my mind, at least. Some people manage to build an entire aesthetic around these objects. While it’s not my cup of tea, …
Aug
22
Toronto Life decided that I’m one of the city’s twelve most stylish people. The wife still can’t believe they didn’t go with the pic of me eating tacos in my underwear. I can’t believe they actually got a usable photo. I’m pretty stiff in front of a camera and don’t like being told what to …
Jun
12
Beyond the cloth and fit, I love bespoke for the participation it allows and relationships it creates. Not only with people but with objects. I have about three roles with most objects: Consumer, user and garbage creator. I buy a microwave, hit buttons until it breaks, then toss it out. I don’t understand how it …
May
31
I first heard of Jacques de Bascher when a friend lent me a copy of The Beautiful Fall: Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris. I never finished that book. It bored me stupid, actually. But the character of Jacques de Bascher caught my attention. Insofar as being a muse can be called a function, …
Mar
30
A fairly decent short news report on Chappism, which has spread to France. While I don’t consider myself a chap and chaps don’t consider me a chap, I do feel a certain affinity with this group and view them as friendlies. We share many common points. (Both in insurrectionist methodology and style.) I suspect that …
Feb
12
Yesterday, when Mubarak finally resigned, I was at my tailor. Dandyism and revolution have long made strange bedfellows. Eons before the British mocked the American revolutionaries with their song of Yankee Doodle Dandy some of our better dressed people have done much to overthrow the powers that be in politics and culture. If a camera phone is …
Jan
20
“The redemption of objects is impossible except by virtue of becoming an object. As the work of art must destroy and alienate itself to become an absolute commodity, so the dandy-artist must become a living corpse, constantly tending toward another, a creature essentially nonhuman and antihuman.” –Giorgio Agamben
Nov
28
Oct
22
When reading about suits, one can find quite a bit of fussy, fashionable nonsense. Edicts about the amount of buttons, the ones that should be done up and the correct width of ties. While some of these make a great deal of sense (meaning I subscribe to them) others are just passed from person to person without much intervening thought. Indeed, some of these, at one time, did make sense but in today’s world veer into obsolescence. The basic rules of fit, texture and color remain fundamental. Some of the other stuff can be dispensed with.
Oct
15
During my most recent closet purge, I tossed out quite a few pairs of shoes. This left me with two pairs for work, one pair of slippers and three pairs (in the fundamental colors of black, brown and silver) for leisure. A perfectly fine base but a collection that I wished to carefully expand. I wanted a …
Sep
15
Of all the things I had to toss out in the past week, the very easiest to deal with was my clothes. It might be because I didn’t have to toss any of them out. I had already rationalized my closet. It’s been purged of everything except bespoke and work uniforms. Though it will doubtless continue to …
Aug
21
pic nicked from here
Aug
21
I’ve been feeling strangely restless of late and last night, at about 2 am, I asked the wife if she intended to be awake until dawn. Like me, she’s a night owl and usually goes to bed shortly before the sun comes out. ”What time is dawn?” she asked. I checked the weather network …
Jul
02
As I take people like Oscar Wilde, Cicero and Friedrich Reck-Malleczenwen as my models of political dissent, I think it’s important to remember that even in horrible times, especially then, beauty, dignity and basic human decency are of paramount importance. Although they are the first things to become improbable, you must never allow your better parts to …
Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (sci-fi), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap.
